


Kiss Kiss Big Bang: A Vampire Apocalypse in Four Parts

by grav_ity



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-30
Updated: 2011-09-30
Packaged: 2017-10-24 04:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grav_ity/pseuds/grav_ity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helen and Nikola must work together to stop a vampire apocalypse, but that’s only if they can save themselves first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Woman in White

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Well, this has certainly been a word journey!  
> Spoilers: This is an AU of “Awakening”, where we imagine that Nikola couldn’t reach the grappling hook, and therefore couldn’t help Helen stop Afina, allowing the Vampire Queen to wake her court.  
> Rating: Teen, with warnings for blood and Jack the Ripper.  
> Word Count: 26,959  
> Disclaimer: I should be so lucky.  
> Character/Pairing: At this point, it might be easier to make a list of people who are not in this story, but the chief Kiss Kiss in this Big Bang is Helen Magnus/Nikola Tesla.
> 
> The art for this story was done by lupinskitten, and can be found [here](http://hetbigbang.weebly.com/lupinskitten---kiss-kiss-bang-bang-artwork.html).

**The Woman in White**

 _There’s a woman at the London Sanctuary who’s been there since 1898._

 _Her room is on the ground floor, overlooking the back garden, and in the summer, the valiant London sun shines through the light curtains. When the window is open, the breeze carries the soft scents of summer flowers, and the room seems almost lively, but most of the time, the atmosphere is overwhelmingly reminiscent of a hospital._

 _For a long time, the only sound in the room, besides whatever floats in from the garden, is the sound of her breathing. Her chest rises and falls softly, her pale skin bleeding pigment into the white cotton sheets until it’s difficult to tell where the woman leaves off and the bedding begins. Only her red hair, spread starkly against the pillows, provides variance in colour. Now, there is the quiet hum of machinery as well; devices added to the room as they were invented, to better monitor her unchanging signs of life._

 _She has survived the turn of two centuries, the influenza epidemic, the Depression, the Blitz, the reconstruction, and the great, albeit somewhat unanticipated, Elwetrische migration of 1973. By the time Declan starts working at the Sanctuary, she is practically part of the architecture. The only person who has been there longer is James himself._

 _Declan knows better than to ask who she is, not that he thinks James won’t tell him, but rather that he’s almost positive he would, and Declan’s not sure he wants to know. It gets to be a habit, not knowing, and it’s almost five weeks after James’s death that Declan remembers her at all, and even then, it’s only to ask Magnus how best to evacuate her. He requests Druitt’s help, assuming that teleportation is the easiest way to move a comatose woman. Magnus sends Clara to manage it, and Declan just assumes that Druitt is busy somewhere else._

 _When they rebuild the London Sanctuary, they simply put her back in her bed, and she sleeps on._

 _Her name is Mary, Declan learns, but aside from that and the date, her file is empty. When things calm down, he resolves, he’ll ask Magnus. Not knowing was a luxury he afforded himself when he was second in command, but as Head of House, he needs to understand everything that lives within the walls, even if he’s still not entirely sure he wants to._

 _At the Sanctuary, things have a habit of never calming down._

++

There was no alarm, no overt indication that anything was wrong, but Declan hadn’t survived this long working for the Sanctuary Network by ignoring his hunches, so when that specifically frustrating sense of wrongness settled into his gut as he poured over his end of quarter paperwork, he got up to take a quick look at the security camera feeds. If nothing else, a potential disaster would spare him from having to deal with the accounting, which was late anyway as it was nearly the end of September.

The feeds were empty of anything that could explain his unease, but even the absence of anything alarming on the screens was not enough to quiet his stomach. There was something not right. Something that pulled at the edge of his awareness like a string, tugging at his thoughts as though they were open to share. He paused for a tranq gun on his way out of his office, and picked up a flashlight before heading towards the back of the house to begin his sweep.

The house was very nearly deserted this weekend. Unlike the Old City Sanctuary, which functioned primarily as a boarding house for employees and patients alike, the UK establishment actually let the staff have the odd weekend off. Declan suspected this was largely because Magnus refused to hire more than the absolute minimum number of fulltime people, and do the rest of her work through a network of less likely to argue with her freelancers. James had been solitary by nature but a capable delegator of tasks, and Declan had inherited an operation somewhat larger than the one Magnus ran, in population if not in scope.

So Declan encountered no one as he traversed the dimly lit halls. No creatures out of their enclosures, no stealthily invading force of freshly minted bad guys, nothing at all to explain his unrest. He was just about to give up, with some disgust at his own paranoia, when he rounded the corner to the very back hallway on the lower floor and came face to face with the source of his discontent.

He had the presence of mind to shine the flashlight directly in her face to buy himself a bit of time to get over his shock, and it worked fairly well. She cried out and raised her hand to block her eyes from the intensity of the beam. It sounded almost like she was afraid of him, instead of being startled or caught off guard by his appearance, but before he finished thinking that, he had reached her, dropped the light in favour of keeping grasp of the gun, and closed his fingers around her narrow wrist.

James’s Source Blood gift had been the increase of his brain power. He had originally assumed that the blood had made him smarter, but as he watched the progression of modern computing, which he held in somewhat less disdain than he pretended; he became more and more convinced that the blood had in fact sped up his processing speed. He wasn’t particularly smarter than his colleagues, he simply ran through his thoughts at a greater speed. It was thus that he had been able to deduce motive, means and opportunity so quickly for the Yard, and it was a skill that Declan had been practicing in himself ever since he began work at the Sanctuary. He did this not so much to impress James, nor with the idea that it would help him keep his job, but with the understanding that if he didn’t, he would never get a word in edgewise.

So it was that as soon as Declan’s hand closed around the strange woman’s arm, his mind began to close around the facts: the seeming frailty of her bones, the long white dress she wore, her unfamiliarity with the idea of a flashlight. This was Mary, the woman in white he had so steadfastly ignored, who had lived here since James had looked his age. As soon as that thought crossed his mind, he felt as though a floodgate inside his head had opened, loosing his thoughts into the ether, pulled by some unseen hand into the open. He struggled against her grasp, but for all her frailty, she held him fast, and he felt his thoughts leech away as the blackness closed in around him.

++

Helen watched helplessly as Nikola careened into the chute, pushed by the very Vampire Queen he had thought to revere. She could tell by the length of his shout that the fall was far indeed, and could only hope that his newly recovered powers would be sufficient to heal him after he broke every bone in his body. At this point, it was probably too much to hope that he’d be able to get out of the chute on his own, and Afina’s victorious smirk made it clear that she had similar doubts. Helen resigned herself to having to extricate Nikola herself, but of course she had more pressing concerns at the moment.

Afina’s teeth were still unsheathed, Nikola’s blood on her chin and her eyes alight with a feral hunger far more powerful than Helen had ever seen in Nikola. Afina had been sleeping for a very long time, Helen remembered, and it was likely that she had merely used her biting of Nikola as a distraction instead of actual nutrition, which put Helen at the top of a potentially very unpleasant list. Helen considered her options and found them woefully unattractive, which simply meant that it was time to develop a few new ones. Even though she was sure it was pointless, Helen took a step closer to the abyss.

“Nikola!” she called out, and Afina laughed and pushed her away from the edge.

“Don’t worry,” she said, not even sparing a glance as she walked away from the chute. “He won’t be disturbing us. That old trap was designed for a true vampire, a warrior. Not a school boy.”

“Why did you do that?” Helen demanded. She was starting to guess, but hoped for confirmation.

“When I repopulate my species I plan to do much better than a mixed blood mongrel,” Afina said, busily pressing chyrons on a panel Helen hadn’t noticed before. In vain, she tried to make out the sequence, but Afina blocked her sight with her body.

A door slid open, and in a flash, Helen found herself pressed back against the wall of the tomb, held in place by all the strength Nikola had ever had and been too considerate to ever bring fully to bear. Helen swallowed her instinctive panic, and forced herself to rationally rewrite everything she knew about vampires.

She had never feared Nikola, none of them had. How could she, when she had seen his vanity and his vulnerabilities laid out so clearly for all those years at Oxford? Even with the Source Blood inside him, he was still Nikola, the foreigner who never fit anywhere, not in even in America, who claimed she would take all comers. Helen had weathered Nikola’s increasingly elaborate schemes, watched his breakdown during the Wars, and eventually made sure the world would never bother him again, only to have him resurface with even more bizarre designs six decades later, and kiss her in an Italian hallway as though no time at all had gone by.

It was his harmlessness that had made it so easy for her to let him back in, even as she plotted her escape route from the Roman catacombs. She never believed he would kill her, no matter how hard she pushed. John had proven the point moot with a characteristically dramatic rescue, but the fact remained that when it came to vampires, Helen’s defences were firmly down. That assurance, and her complete unwillingness to lose him on the heels of losing James and possibly John, had made her reckless, tampering with Afina’s encasement without giving thought to any possible consequences.

Of course, if she was entirely honest with herself, even if she had known that saving Nikola would result in the reanimation of the Vampire Queen, she probably would have done it anyway. Her relationship with Nikola was complicated and tentative, not to mention dangerous (and whatever stronger word Will had come up with), but it was all she had left, and she knew herself well enough to know that she would not sacrifice it for anything. Furthermore, it was done now, and Helen Magnus was not in the habit of looking back.

It was to her detriment now, the ease and affection she had for him. She had been lulled into thinking that vampires would be like him, and her indulgence of him, from the reading to the precious moments she’d given Afina to scheme, were going to cost them both, and Helen didn’t know if either of them could pay it. The Caesars, the Pharaohs, they had all held one thing in common: a sense of complete superiority. They were the masters of the human race, and Helen found herself quite mastered, despite her hatred of it. She had to stop thinking of Afina and Nikola as being the same species. It was clear enough that Afina did not consider them as such, and with Afina’s hand pressing her back against the stone, Helen’s remaining illusions about the weakness of the vampire race were quickly cut off.

“You though,” Afina continued, and Helen had never wanted to wipe the smirk of a creature’s face so badly as she did now, “will be quite useful.”

“How?” she said, though she knew very well what Afina had in mind. “I’m less vampire than he is.”

“Exactly,” Afina gloated. “A blood donor that stays young and fresh forever, but without the bitter aftertaste.”

“I hope you choke on it,” Helen said, mustering a strength to her voice she could not match in her body.

She would not flinch. She would not cry out. She had been bitten before, and knew the uncanny rush that would follow. She knew Afina was different, stronger, more cruel, but she refused to fear. Instead, she latched on to the feelings she’d aroused when Nikola had lain dying on the floor of this accursed tomb, felt the hot determination and anger coil in her stomach. This was where her strength came from, not from superhuman muscle or reknitted bone. She had been born in a time when her sex had rendered her nearly worthless, or at least not worth anything she cared to value. She had always fought an uphill battle. This one was no different.

Afina did not choke.

++

James knocked out his pipe against the mantelpiece, sprinkling used tobacco into the hearth fire, and settled back into his armchair to begin stuffing the pipe anew. Once it was lit, he set his feet upon the fender and took to contentedly puffing half-formed smoke rings as though their malformations were his intent and not the result of fruitless hours of practice. Helen was gone for the evening, out at some lecture or other that had been so uninteresting to him that he hadn’t bothered to remember any of the details, and the rest of the inhabitants of their fledging Sanctuary were settled in for the night, whether crate, cage or guestroom was what they called home.

Though he had no complaints with regard to his partnership with Helen, James treasured evenings like this. In his spacious and well lit sitting room, he could not pretend that he still kept his cluttered rooms on Baker Street, but he could enjoy the illusion that the silence of the evening would not be shattered by some marauding sphinx-cub, and that the morning would present no dilemmas more complicated than reasoning out the truth behind the carefully innuendo-ridden reports on various social scandals in the more tawdry of London’s newspapers.

He very determinedly did not think about how easy it had been in his old rooms to open the wooden box he kept in the top drawer of his desk, fill the needle with a surgeon’s care, and press plunger to vein with no thought to being found mussed and insensible by a meddling Helen Magnus. John had never lived in this house, but between them, James and Helen had burned his memory into every part of it, and ten years on, the pain was still as fresh as it had been all that time ago, and while he was maintaining the pretence of being respectable, it was difficult for James to forget.

With Helen expected back this evening he could not indulge himself as he might wish to, but he found that he was content to limit himself to pipe and port, and the hope that when Helen herself returned, she would be willing, as she often was, to accept his advances. It was not a happy game they played with one another, but it did permit a certain forgetfulness they both needed very much, and it was a damn sight easier than anything else he could think of, short of vices that might leave him floating face down in the Thames.

He heard the bell ring downstairs and sighed deeply at the ruin of his evening’s peace. He counted patiently, fifteen seconds for Allistair to reach the door, another six to determine the caller’s intent and degree of emergency, and then no more than thirty for the butler to reach his rooms. When James reached a full minute with nothing to show for it, he resigned himself to an evening truly lost, seized his medical bag from where it lay on his desk, and made for the stairs.

The sight that greeted him drove all thoughts of leisurely malingering out of his mind, and the coldly efficient medical doctor was in full form by the time James reached the bottom of the stairs. Allistair was on his knees, holding the slight figure of a poorly dressed woman in his arms. She was covered in blood, but her pinked cheeks and the lack of any emergent pool beneath her suggested that the blood was not hers.

“Allistair?” James said, expecting a report with all speed.

“I’ve no earthly idea, Dr. Watson,” the butler said. “I opened the door to find her swooning on the sill, and when I made to offer her my arm, she collapsed as soon as I laid a hand upon her, though I swear it was not with any force that I grasped her.”

“I see,” James said. “Please carry her into my examination room. This is hardly the place for a diagnosis. And send someone for Helen. I doubt this poor soul is in any normal trouble, or she would not have come here so late.”

“At once,” Allistair said, and heaved the unconscious woman up into his arms.

It was a short trip to James’s exam room, which was still located on the first floor near the kitchens to give Helen some privacy, though he had not treated a normal patient in some months now, save for his regulars who all knew very well what else went on in Dr. Magnus’s domain. Then Allistair disappeared to the kitchen to rouse one of the boys to send after Helen. Of course the butler knew where she was.

James lit the lamps and turned them up as bright as they would go. He did not care for practicing medicine in the dark, but sometimes there was little help for it. It was not, after all, as though he could wait until morning. He shrugged on a lab coat, lest she wake and be sick on his waistcoat, and prepared for the examination. Wherever Helen was, he hoped she would return soon. It flew in the face of all logic and science, but James could not shake the idea that this woman, whoever she was, would require Helen’s help most of all.

++

Declan came to with an acrid smell in his nostrils and a cool hand on his forehead. As soon as he coughed, the hand was withdrawn, sharply, as though it had not meant to offend, but the smell lingered. The pieces floated, just beyond his reach, but the strings that pulled his thoughts from him were gone, and he found it easier to order his mind.

The smell was easy to identify. The slime mold, caught by James and Ashley nearly a decade ago, had once again escaped its enclosure. Declan knew that it meant no offense, that it was simply curious as to what was going on in the Sanctuary, but its habit of eating the carpet, not to mention any available shoes, was rather annoying. Still, it was harmless enough and easily caught, if one had access to a medium sized fish tank.

He was struggling to sit up before he remembered the woman in white.

His gun was gone, which did not surprise him, and while he did have a knife strapped to his leg under his trousers, he wasn’t entirely sure it would be warranted. He had, after all, been unconscious long enough that the slime mold had made it all the way down the hallway, and it did not move with any good speed. If Mary wished him ill, she’d have worked it already. Instead he found her sitting too, just out of arm’s reach, as though she had been waiting for him to wake up.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her accent so thick he could barely make it out even though it was definitely British of some kind. “I’m sorry, Declan. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

Declan was used to the odd, but he was not used to the odd knowing his name, and his surprise must have been clear upon his face, because she shifted backwards, further away from him.

“My name is Mary, do you know that?” Her accent was driving him nuts. It sounded like something off a TV program. He remembered her age, and realized that she was a Londoner like he was, only from another time.

“Yes,” he said. “And I am Declan MacRae, though it appears you already know that.”

“I cannot help that,” she replied. “You touched me.”

“Yes,” he said, though he did not understand. “Shall we continue this in the study, or do you already know everything I am going to say?”

“Your mind is your own again, Mr. MacRae,” Mary said.

“Declan, please,” he said, and stood. Without thinking, he extended his hand to help her up, but she only smiled and got to her feet on her own. “Right,” he said. “Are you cold? We can get you something besides pajamas now that you’re awake. Dr. Magnus keeps clothes here you might be comfortable in, though she’s quite a bit bigger than you are.”

“That would be nice,” Mary said.

Declan realized that while her accent was old-fashioned, her syntax was not unlike his own. The idea made him a bit uncomfortable. He pushed the thought down, even though she’d told him she couldn’t read it, and led the way down the corridor and up the stairs to the room Magnus used for storage. They were greeted by the faint scent of mothballs, and Declan pulled the chain that brought the suspended lightbulb on. Mary squinted up at it, eyes closed against the light, and then began looking over the various trousers, skirts and business suits Magnus kept stored at the front of the closet.

“What year is it, Declan MacRae, that I can call you by your Christian name and Dr. Magnus can walk about in men’s clothing?”

“It’s 2011,” he said. “You’ve been out for a long time. Did you not get that from my mind?”

“No,” she said. “You have a great many dates in your head, future, present and past. I couldn’t tell which of them was today’s.”

“Ah,” he said. “If you look towards the back, you might find something a bit more familiar.”

“Thank you,” Mary said, and pushed back into the closet.

She emerged a few moments later with a simple dress, its hem cut quite a bit shorter than the others. It had been made to go over a petticoat and corset, but the intended wearer had balked at the idea of both, much to the chagrin of her uncle who had gone to a great deal of trouble to plan the party. Declan had recused himself to the laboratory until the argument was finished; he knew better than to get between Ashley and James. The party had been quite memorable for other reasons besides that, though, and Declan still had his own costume carefully wrapped at the back of his wardrobe.

“This was not Dr. Magnus’s,” Mary said.

“No,” Declan said around a surprisingly large lump in his throat. “That was Ashley’s.”

Mary cocked her head at him, and he imagined he could see her sorting through whatever information she had gleaned from him when he had grabbed her arm.

“It worked, then.” It was not a question, which was just as well as Declan couldn’t answer it. “And I’m sorry you lost a friend.”

“It was some time ago,” Declan said. He shook his head. “I’ll show you up to a guest suite if you like, and then perhaps something to eat?”

Declan led the way upstairs, careful not to brush against Mary on the staircase or as he opened the door to her room. He gave her directions on how to get back to his sitting room, his public one, not the one attached to the apartment he had inherited somewhat reluctantly from James, and was all the way to the kitchen before he realized that he’d neglected to explain how any of the modern plumbing features worked. He considered going back upstairs to rectify his mistake, but took so long debating that Mary showed up in the doorway with wet hair before he’d made a decision, rendering the whole point moot.

“There’s bread and cheese,” he said, gesturing to the plate he’d set out. “And some fruit. I thought perhaps you should start out simply. Tea?”

“Black, please,” she said, taking a seat. “I suppose you want to know exactly what I can do.”

“That would be a good start,” Declan said. “But please eat first.”

“I can manage both,” Mary said with a smile. “Tell me, have you ever heard of Jack the Ripper?”

++

Kate took a moment before going back to the punching bag after Will left. She wasn’t winded or tired, at least not in the conventional sense, and she knew her own physical limitations well enough to know that she had at least another round in her before her muscles started to burn, but emotionally she was nearly worn out. It had been primarily adrenaline that got her through the raid, adrenaline and anger, and now both were running low and hitting things was not making her feel much better. Still, she pushed on, fists against the bag in a rhythm as fast as she could manage.

It was only a matter of time before Castor contacted her, thinking he would get his due. She would give him no such satisfaction, and had half a mind to set up the meet herself. Dead Bridge would do nicely, set the tone she wanted and give her home field advantage. She caught the bag in her gloved hands, stilling it in midair, and then undid the laces on her gloves with her teeth. She hung the gloves, the only things in the whole room she hadn’t inherited from Ashley, and pulled her cellphone out of her jacket to send the message.

Kate swore when she saw that she had a text from Castor already. At least it was Dead Bridge he wanted to meet at, and he had outlined terms for a truce. She wasn’t stupid enough to believe him, of course, and was already planning her lines of defense even as she showered and dressed. Escaping without drawing the attention of Will or the Big Guy wasn’t easy, but Kate was an accomplished smuggler, and she knew a few ways out of the Sanctuary that would at least be harder to track, if not completely unnoticeable.

She parked halfway up the bridge, in plain view of the black van that perched on the edge, and walked up to meet Castor and the rest of his crew. She had a gun tucked into the waistband of her pants, obscured by the line of her jacket. It wasn’t exactly allowed by the terms Castor had outlined, but she wasn’t about to walk up to him unarmed, and she suspected he’d have his own piece in any case.

“I’m here, Castor!” she called out, shouting over the wind once she was close enough. “What do you want?”

“You messed up a very pretty operation of mine, Freelander,” Castor said, stepping out from behind the van. Kate tensed, but Castor spread his hands wide to show his apparent harmlessness.

“It’s a bad habit I’ve acquired lately,” Kate said. “Are you expecting something from me?”

“I think you might like this one,” Castor said. He threw open the sliding door of the van and Kate saw the unconscious form of a young woman sprawled out in the back.

“What the hell, Castor!” Kate exclaimed, dropping her guard a little bit even as she felt two of Castor’s goons flank her.

“Nothing like that!” Castor said. “I don’t trade in anything that looks like me. We nabbed her just before you raided us. Said she could sense the distress of the creatures and was trying to free them, but since she lacked your spectacularly well-armed back-up dancers, she didn’t really stand much of a chance against us.”

“Charming,” said Kate.

“Anyway, we got a little bit distracted just after we nabbed her, and then out of the blue she fainted on us,” Castor said.

“And you called me because?” Kate said.

“Well I sure as hell don’t traffic in humanoids,” Castor repeated. “And also, right before she fainted she said ‘Sanctuary’, which of course made me think of you.”

“What do you want, Castor?” Kate was entirely sick of his posturing. “Just make me your offer.”

“We turn over this, whatever she is, and you forget to tell Magnus my name when she gets back to town,” Castor said.

Kate weighed her options. There were two guys behind her and God only knew how many more at the bottom of the bridge. And Castor seemed to be genuine in his proposal.

“Fine,” Kate said. “One of your goons has to carry her to my car.”

“Done,” Castor said.

“And Castor,” Kate added. “This was your warning. Next time I won’t be so nice.”

He didn’t get close enough to shake her hand, but one of his goons slung the girl over his shoulder and followed Kate back to her car, so Kate didn’t complain. She had the goon put the girl in the backseat and then wrestled her seatbelt on. Hopefully it would look like Kate’s passenger had merely fallen asleep. She didn’t fancy explaining an unconscious female whose name she didn’t know to a curious police officer, so she drove the speed limit all the way back to the Sanctuary. Even with her precautions, she didn’t breathe easily until she was inside the gate.

Once she parked, she leaned over and punched the intercom. A few seconds later, she was telling Will that she’d picked up a guest and needed help and also a medical gurney. He reached the garage in record time, the Big Guy on his heels, and since Kate had the door open, Will was right there when the girl groaned and wrestled to sit up straight in Kate’s car.

Will stared, and the girl stared back.

“Sophie?”

++

James was approximately halfway through taking the woman’s blood pressure when she awoke.

“No!” she said, and pulled her arm out his hold. Moving more quickly than James was aware was possible in a petticoat and skirts, she was off the table and had pressed herself back against the opposite wall before James could blink.

“My dear, I am a trained physician,” he said as kindly as he could manage, though to be honest she had given him quite a start. “I promise you that you are in a safe place and possibly in need of medical care.”

“Where is Dr. Magnus?” the woman demanded.

“She has been sent for and will be returning shortly, I assure you,” James said. “If you would please return to the table, I can – ”

“No,” she said firmly. “It must be Dr. Magnus.”

James bit the inside of his cheek in frustration before deciding to chalk it up to the insensible things that women did sometimes. It was better than taking it as a slight to his professionalism, in any case.

“Would you at least care to wash?” James said, indicating the basin on the sideboard. There was quite a bit of blood on the woman’s dress, though his initial guess had proved correct and it was not hers.

“Thank you,” she said, and cautiously approached. “But you must not touch me.”

“Why not?” He had never liked being told what to do.

“Because I already know that you love the man I stabbed tonight,” she said. “And moreover, I know that he loves you, in his own twisted way, and that is why you are still alive. I do not care to learn anything more from you.”

James reeled, clutching at the examination table for support when he thought his knees might give way. She seemed uneasy as well, as though she could detect his emotions beyond the visible evidence he gave. And of course that was what is was. She could read his mind.

“Are you only capable of reading the thoughts of those you touch?” he asked, hoping to catch her off guard by seemingly reading her mind in turn.

“The men I touch, yes,” she said, her voice weak but otherwise unharried. “Except for John Druitt, whose thoughts project from him like a bullet from a rifle. You yourself were unremarkable until I mentioned stabbing him, at which point your surprise must have rendered your thoughts strong enough for me to read without contact. I beg you, do not touch me.”

“No fear of that,” James said, taking a step back. “But tell me what you have done to John.”

“I may have killed him,” she said. “At least I stabbed him in a place where he may die of his wounds.”

“How did you find him?” James asked with some jealousy. The last he had heard of John, the killer had been in Germany.

“I let him find me,” she said. “I knew the date, and so I went to Whitechapel and waited.”

James kicked himself for not thinking of the same plan. It was the anniversary of Mary Kelly’s death, though not of her discovery, and it made sense that John would be in London tonight.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“You will not believe me when I tell you,” she said.

“I cannot believe you if you do not tell me, either,” he pointed out.

“Very well,” she said. “I am Mary Kelly.”

To his credit, James did not openly gape at her. “How is that possible?” he asked.

“Dr. Magnus has told you that we met?” Mary said. When James nodded, she continued. “I was not in my rooms when the Ripper came for me; I was hiding. An abortionist friend of mine had sent a young woman there to recover, not knowing that by doing so her life would be in danger. Druitt did not know the difference, and when he was done, there was nothing sufficient for proper identification.”

James shuddered. He was usually able to shrug off crime scenes, but every detail of Mary Kelly’s flat had been burned into his mind since he’d seen it a decade ago.

“When I heard the news, I hid,” Mary said. “And then I fled London until tonight, when I deemed it safe to return for revenge.”

“Your intuition is commendable,” James said, but he got no further because at that moment Helen burst into the room.

“James?” she said, “Allistair said there was a woman…”

She trailed off as her eyes fell on Mary and widened in surprise. James was about to step in and endeavour to explain when he saw the play of emotions on Helen’s face mirrored in Mary’s eyes. Mary began to convulse, caught in thoughts she had not expected and could not control, and he had only just stepped around the table to catch her when she collapsed against him.

++

“And that is all I remember until I woke up in the bed here. Even the first few moments of wakefulness were very disjointed, like I was moving outside of time until you filled in all the blanks for me when you grabbed my arm,” Mary said.

“So it was Helen’s arrival and her thoughts that bowled you over?” Declan said. “Even though she was a woman?”

“Yes,” Mary said. “I did not have time to wonder at it and I have no idea if they ever figured it out.”

“Oh, I have no doubt that James at least had a guess,” Declan said. “He would have written it down, and I would have filed it alphabetically when I redid the archive after he died. James’s filing system was a mess, but I’ve more or less sorted it out.”

“I am sorry for that loss as well,” Mary said, a soft expression on her face. “He deserved someone better than the Ripper.”

“Thank you,” said Declan. “Are you up for checking the archive tonight?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think the sooner we figure out why I am awake now, the better.”

Declan hadn’t thought that far ahead. It followed that if an overwhelming telepathic event had been what rendered her comatose for more than a century, a similarly spectacular event must be responsible for her awakening. He went to the computer and began a search in the archive, much to the interest of Mary.

“Fascinating,” she said. “I will have a lot of catch up on.”

“I think there’s a manual somewhere,” Declan said absently. He checked himself off her incredulous look. “Not for time travel, or whatever, but more for abnormals who come to us from low tech locales.”

“I see,” she said.

“It was one of James’s pet projects,” Declan said, smiling. “He didn’t get out much once the 90s started.”

“Apparently no one had the sense to die properly,” Mary said.

Declan was about to answer that when the search turned up Mary’s file. He printed off two copies and handed one to her, his fingers accidentally brushing hers as she took it. She shuddered.

“I can read, Mr. MacRae,” she said, but she didn’t sound like she’d taken offense, either from the accidental touch of his presumption of her illiteracy. “There’s not a lot to do when one is in hiding.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, as much for the touch as anything else. She nodded and they turned to reading.

James had been characteristically verbose in his diagnosis, and eventually Mary had to admit that she could make out the words but not their meaning.

“He theorized that you detected their thoughts because of something called the Source Blood,” Declan said. “It’s what they did to themselves back in the 1880s, what gave them their powers.”

“That makes as much sense as anything,” Mary said. “Except that I still don’t know why I am awake.”

“You were overloaded by James and Magnus,” Declan mused. “James thought you put yourself in the coma until you could cope with the power of suddenly reading the thoughts of people you weren’t touching. Presumably, you’re awake now because you can stand to be in the same room as them, but short of getting Magnus here to test it, I can’t see a way to be sure.”

“It wasn’t just waking up,” Mary said. “It was as though someone had shouted very loudly.”

Declan straightened and reached for the telephone.

“What did I say?” Mary said.

“Nothing in particular,” Declan said, already dialling. “It’s just that around here, I like to know who’s shouting.”

“Who’s shouting?” Mary repeated.

“Let’s just say there’s a short list, and I’m not a fan of most of the people on it,” Declan said.

The phone began to ring, and a few moments later, Declan was talking to Bigfoot.


	2. The Pit and the Pendulum

**The Pit and the Pendulum**

 _Nikola wakes._

 _There’s blood in the air, though both his wrist and his chest healed long before he regained consciousness. He can feel his bones moving, trying to set themselves, and he moves to accommodate them. It’s not one of the things he has missed from when he’d been human. Immortal or no, there’s something distinctly disturbing about putting one’s own body back together. He rolls his neck as his legs, hips and spine realign themselves, and tests his weight on his arms._

 _They hold._

 _There’s blood in the air, and not all of it is his. There are tiny drops on the walls of the chute. Humans wouldn’t see them, cast off from when he fell, but no pool formed where he was lying. He’d been healed before he even hit the ground. The blood he smells now is fresh, shed more recently then his brush with death in the tomb above. His head is almost clear enough to think._

 _The blood is Helen’s._

 _The Vampire Queen must have fed on her, even after she’d taken his blood. It’s unthinkable, intolerable, that Helen has been used this way, and yet so, so very desirable. His mouth is full of teeth again and his rage shows in red-rimmed black eyes and elongated nails, and it’s so much better than he remembered and all the more torturous for being once again made powerless._

 _He won’t stand for that again._

 _He swears in every language he knows and jumps, clinging to the wall with newly formed claws and snarling around his teeth. It isn’t enough, and he slides back down in a way that would appear comical if there was anyone around to see him. He’s both glad and annoyed there isn’t. He’s never liked people seeing him in moments of weakness, but if there was someone else here, he could _eat_ them, and then maybe he’d get out._

 _That’s a lie: he doesn’t break his promises, not the ones he makes to her, not ever._

 _He reaches out with all his senses, made strong again by his transformation. He hears nothing, feels no movement in the air. He can taste and smell the blood, his own and Helen’s, and he can’t control his reaction. Even the peanuts are starting to sound like a good idea. He reaches out along the electromagnetic spectrum, seeking anything metal that might have been packed into his or Helen’s bag, something he can use._

 _There is nothing there._

 _Afina has taken his pack. She only had a few moments to prepare herself for world domination, and she’s reacting to the prospect startling fast. It’s very frustrating. He snarls again, and wonders how many years it will be before some over-enthusiastic idealist joins him in his prison. Maybe she’ll come back to gloat and he’ll figure something out when she does. That’s usually when his plans fall apart. At least, he thinks, he can see, for all there’s nothing to look at but plain grey walls._

 _That, of course, is when the lights go out._

++

Helen had known since her days at Oxford that vampires were strong. In the initial tests after their injection of the Source Blood, Nikola had been able to dead lift John as though he were made of feathers, and though he could not maintain it for very long, he had lifted the carriage clear off its rear axle, just to see if it were possible. Afina was stronger still, all but carrying Helen and both packs like they were nothing to her. Helen was conscious, though somewhat fuzzy due to the bloodletting, and was aware only that they were going down.

This made no sense, of course. The world was up, and if Afina meant to claim it, she should not be burrowing into the ground. But of course she wasn’t burrowing. She was retrieving. _Afina and her court_ lay buried here, and that meant the other vampires must be located further into the tomb.

Helen shook her head, desperate to clear it before she was confronted with even more newly risen vampires. Being fed on by one was hard enough and Helen was not looking forward to any subsequent resurrections. If she was going to make any kind of escape, she would have to engineer it before Afina could make her next move. Of course, that probably meant she’d have to be able to stand on her own two feet, which at the moment was looking more and more difficult.

With an ungraceful thump, Helen found herself on the hard floor, an arm’s length from the pedestal at which Afina stood. Her eyes fell on the packs, and then Afina laughed and threw them both across the room. Helen still had a knife in her boot, though she knew that it would do little against the Queen of the Vampires. She had to try though, so she took a deep breath and coiled all her energy so that she could spring out and attack.

She never got the chance. Before she’d even moved her hands, Afina had completed the sequence on the panel, and the wall slid open revealing coffin after coffin, each as perfectly preserved as Afina’s solitary tomb had been. Helen’s breath caught. There were so many of them. She wasn’t sure the human race could stand against such a force, and as much as it galled her to admit it, she knew she couldn’t stand against it for very long either.

“Don’t worry, Helen,” Afina said solicitously. “You’re not for them.”

It was pathetically small comfort, but at least Helen knew she wouldn’t end up a shrivelled husk on the cold stone, unless of course Afina’s court overpowered their queen and took Helen anyway.

“Come and watch the future unfold,” Afina said, dragging Helen up to the panel.

Her wrist had not yet healed from Afina’s bite, though the blood flow had stemmed. Unlike a bite from Nikola, which require binding like any other wound, something in Afina’s bite seemed to inspire healing. Helen was not entirely sure she liked that, but at the same time she was grateful for the way her head was clearing. The wound wasn’t healed entirely, though, and when Afina held her wrist out over the panel, Helen could not stop the blood that dripped down on to the chyrons below. They glowed an unearthly orange, and then Helen heard the sound of the crystals breaking, releasing the vampire court within.

She braced herself for an onslaught that never came. For all her bluster, Afina had woken only a few members of her court, presumably those she deemed the most loyal. When they rose, she walked among them, Helen’s blood on her hands betraying the human race with every soft brush of fingertip to mouth. One by one, the risen vampires stood and looked at Helen, teeth sharpening in their mouths as they understood that she was the source of their knowledge, but not their nutrition.

“My court, we are betrayed by my brother,” Afina said. They growled. “But he is dead and we are risen again, thanks in part to this woman here. You will give her the respect she deserves.”

Helen glared at them, but Afina only laughed.

“You speak their tongues, you know their ways,” Afina said. “I bid you: go up into the sun and take stock of the world, that we might take utter possession of it before too many days have passed.”

Again, they growled, sounding their acquiescence in an echoing buzz that penetrated Helen’s very bones. And then they were gone, so quickly that Helen didn’t see the path they took, what escape route she might have utilized, and she was alone with Afina once again.

“Come then,” Afina said, pulling Helen along like a ragdoll. “We should see how poor Nikola has fared.”

Helen cursed inwardly. In all her concern for Afina’s court, she had forgotten Nikola, who had doubtless woken and healed himself by now, and was probably swearing up a storm at the bottom of the pit. Or possibly in possession of some plan that would save them both. She tried very hard not to let her relief show. If Afina were foolish enough to trap them together, Helen was certainly not going to complain about it.

Afina dragged her along, Helen now feigning weakness in the hope that the Vampire Queen would not bleed her again, until they reached the back door to the tomb.

“I’ll have you know that it takes the blood of a vampire to open this door,” Afina said. “And not someone like you.”

To illustrate her point, Afina slid her nails across the newly formed scar on Helen’s wrist, opening it again. Helen winced as Afina used her blood to paint the chyrons, and saw that nothing happened. Then Afina sliced her own wrist, and opened the door to the pitch dark interior of the tomb. Helen was about to call for Nikola when Afina pushed her to her knees, raising her wrist to drink once more.

“Waste not,” she said, and when she had drunk her fill she pushed Helen back into the tomb, staggering from her lightheadedness.

Unconsciousness claimed her before the door slid shut, but not before she felt the warm pool of blood spread beneath her as she lay helpless on the stone.

++

“Helen!” The voice was familiar. The concern was not.

“Helen!” It was right on the edge of her thoughts, a familiarity she could almost remember. She wasn’t sure why it was so dark, but she couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face.

“Helen!” And then she was awake, and she knew him.

“Nikola?” she said, alarmed at the weakness of her own voice. “Where are you?”

“At the bottom of that blasted pit! Where do you think?” he said. “You need to bind wherever she bit you. You’re bleeding too much.”

“How can you tell?” she asked even as she drew her knife to slice her coat to usable strips. “You’re at the bottom of a pit and it’s pitch dark in here.”

“You restored me, Helen,” he reminded her. “I can smell you.”

“Charming,” she said, but her heart wasn’t really in it.

She tore strips off her coat until she had enough fabric to bind her wrist, and then wrapped the wound so tightly that she hissed.

“Can you manage the knot?” Nikola said from below. He was conversational now, and in a way that was almost worse. Frenetic Nikola she could deal with. If Nikola was calm, it only meant he was fighting for control, trying to distract her, and that was not encouraging.

“Yes, thank you,” Helen snapped, but the truth was that the knot was far too loose, and the wrapping was loosening around her wrist as a result.

“You’re still bleeding too much.” There were teeth in his voice now. She was suddenly very, very aware that he hadn’t eaten anything since she’d turned him back, and he’d healed from two separate and not insignificant wounds since then.

“There’s not really much help for that now, is there?” she snapped.

In the dark, her hand closed around the rock she’d used to free enough of Afina to turn Nikola, inadvertently starting an apocalypse in the process. She placed it on her wrist and winced. The weight was painful, but at least it would apply pressure if she lost consciousness again.

With her mobility limited by the stone, Helen paused to take stock. It was far too dark for blind groping around the tomb, and in her lightheaded state, she wasn’t sure she would be able to find the wall panels, much less figure out a way to use them to open a door. Without their supplies, she couldn’t help her body restore equilibrium. She would have to wait while her blood restored itself. Doubtless, that had been Afina’s plan, to weaken her beyond her human fallibilities. And then there was Nikola, who was still at the bottom of the chute.

“How are you, Nikola?” she called out. Her voice was not as thin as she had feared it would be, but she knew he’d be able to discern her frailty anyway. Damn his vampire senses!

“Hungry,” he said. “But aside from that I’m fine, if you discount my location and imagine that I am on some tropical island where some enterprising hotel concierge has had the foresight to lay down a good stock of wine.”

“You should have eaten the peanuts when you had the chance.” She tried to put some humour into her voice, but her snipe sounded stale, even to her own ears.

“I know,” he said with a sigh. “Believe me, I regret passing them up.” He paused. “ I don’t suppose you have anything?”

“You just told me to bind it up!”

For a long moment, there was complete silence. In the dark, Helen was starting to wonder if she had lost consciousness again, or was somehow hallucinating, and missing what he was saying to her. She realized that she could hear him breathing, the measured pace of an animal poised to attack.

“Helen,” he said, teeth in his voice again. She knew what he would look like now, black eyed and sharp clawed. He must be going mad, trapped like that.

“Nikola, I have no idea how to get anything to you, short of throwing myself in,” she said. “And I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said, even though she knows it was. “Helen, you can’t. And even if you could, you can’t.”

“Nikola, I have lost far too much blood to make sense of that.”

“I would never ask for that,” he said. His voice was thick around his teeth, and she could tell he was struggling, in vain, to sheathe them. “Never like this. I know I’ve asked in fun, and you’ve granted me a taste, but I need…more.”

The implication was ominous. Helen took a deep breath and closed her eyes, a pointless gesture in the dark, but one that helped to ground her nonetheless. Yes, Nikola had bitten her before, and she had let him, but she had already been bitten once today, and not in play. She was in no hurry, much less condition, to go through that again. She felt exhausted, sapped of what had remained of her energy as her adrenaline failed her.

“Helen,” Nikola called as the silence lingered. Before she could must enough energy for an answer, he spoke again, worry heavy in his voice. “Helen, you can’t fall asleep.”

“I thought that was my line,” she managed.

“It’s mine now,” he said. “You stay awake.”

“They’re ancient pureblood vampires, Nikola,” she said. “They’ll probably have something to bring me back.”

“You’ve already died once this year.” Then tension in his voice was obvious, even as he tried to joke. “I don’t think you should press your luck.”

“Read to me,” she said, and cursed the frailty of her voice.

“Read what, exactly?” he asked, started. “There’s not a lot down here, unless I write it on the wall myself.”

“Recite, then,” she said. “But no Shakespeare. Or better yet, tell me how you plan to take over the world.”

“Trade secrets, Helen,” he replied. She could her him smile around his sharp teeth. “How do you feel about theoretical astrophysics?”

“Tell me about the dress,” she said instead.

“What?” he said, startled back to humanity.

“The dress,” she repeated. “The red one, from Oxford. I don’t remember it.”

“I do,” he said, and she could feel his smile again, in spite of the dark and the physical distance between them.

“Tell me,” she said, shifting her wrist under the stone so that she was slightly more comfortable.

She closed her eyes again, even though the medical doctor in her knew that it was a bad idea, one she advised Nikola to fight mere hours before, and let him talk.

++

Nikola rarely bothered to carry books with him about campus. He had before, when he went to school at home, but after the years of night time study and then the following abject betrayal in America, he had decided to approach academia at Oxford in an entirely different manner. No more study groups, no more heated discussions about esoterica that lasted until the middle of the night, and definitely no more sharing.

This resolution had lasted until approximately the second day of lectures, when he had been forced into what he thought would be an entirely unproductive laboratory partnership with the only female scholar in the place, a rather devastatingly blonde woman called Helen Magnus. It was not the first time that he had seen her, of course, but it was the first time he had ever had occasion to speak with her, and though he was somewhat loathe to admit to it, for any number of reasons, he was rather smitten with the fact that she could more than keep up with him. As their partnership progressed, she enticed him into joining her carefully selected coterie, and before long, he was as socialized as any proper Englishman at the school.

That didn’t stop the others from looking down their noses at him when it suited them, of course. And by “the others”, he mostly meant James. James had a singularly annoying habit of laying all his faults at the feet of Nikola’s nationality, as though if only he had been English, the punt would not have over-turned and certainly the bolt of lightning that struck the clock tower would have channelled itself obligingly into Nikola’s capacitors instead of frying the roof tiles. To be fair, the only person James did not treat with some amount of sarcastic indifference was John, and in return John defended him from whatever jibe Nikola, Helen or Nigel saw fit to return fire with, but for the most part, their quarrels were well meaning, save when James was in a mood.

He was in a mood now, for a reason Nikola couldn’t guess, but suspected had something to do with the gentleman John had brought back from the afternoon match. From what Nikola had gleaned, they had all gone to school together, and while John’s memories of the time were far from fond, he had put them aside in a way that James had not. James, as usual, would not bait John directly, and was instead explaining Helen to their old schoolmate, and in somewhat unflattering terms. Usually, James’s obtuse nature bored Nikola to tears, but watching the play between James, John and Helen was proving more interesting, if personally unsatisfying, by the day, and this was an intriguing sideshow to the main event, if nothing else.

“Druitt tells me you’ve a young woman in your acquaintance here, studying with you as though she were a gentleman,” the visitor, Perkins or Parkins or something, had begun.

“Indeed we do,” James had said before John could reply, and Nikola watched as John braced for what was about to come. “Though I do not think she would appreciate being referred to as ‘young’. She is of age with us, after all, and in possession of a medical degree from Germany.”

“She went all the way to Germany to become a doctor?” Perkins exclaimed. “I say, I do not understand females at times.”

“Indeed,” said James, and Nikola half expected a bolt of electricity to appear between him and John. “Though most of the time it is as though Dr. Magnus were one of our company, as much a gentleman as any of us.”

At this, even Nigel bristled and James seemed to realize he’d gone too far. He let John change the subject to cricket without any of the disparaging remarks he usually reserved for the subject. Since this effectively closed Nikola out of any discussion, he would have turned to the book he had brought with him, except that Nigel took the seat near him, abandoning the talk of sport to those who had common school days behind them.

“I don’t know why he has to do that,” Nigel murmured, not really angry but certainly annoyed.

“It’s just James,” Nikola said. “He can’t help it sometimes.”

“Do you think he’s in love with Helen too?” Of all of them, it had taken Nigel the longest to drop the honourifics when they weren’t in company.

“No,” said Nikola, quite proud that he had managed not to choke on his answer. Unless he had missed the mark by quite a bit, it wasn’t Helen that James was in love with.

“Oh, thank God,” Nigel said, looking up. “I couldn’t bear it if all three of you were in love with her.”

“Shut up,” Nikola said, and deliberately turned to the book, but Nigel only laughed and pulled a newspaper out of his pocket.

Just another gentleman, James had said, and Nikola had to wonder if the man was blind. Helen might be their equal in terms of intellect and curiosity, but Nikola doubted there was a man at Oxford who could match her for ambition. Even now, she was out in God only knew which part of London doing her very best to secure a substance which, she promised them, would be even more remarkable than anything Nigel might be able to concoct in the laboratory. Furthermore, no gentleman on earth could match her for looks.

The first time Nikola had seen her, before she was made his partner and before he knew who she was, it had been a sunny day. He’d been coming across the green with nothing in his arms, because that was who he was now, and there she was, stepping out as though she utterly belonged and anyone who thought otherwise could go and jump in the Thames. Scholars at Oxford wore black robes, damned foolery in Nikola’s opinion, but at least if no one saw his suits, no one would guess that he wore the same three on rotation. Technically, there were no females accepted at Oxford; they were merely auditors, but most of them wore black dresses to fit in, and also to catch any ink, or worse, that might be spilled during the course of the day.

Helen Magnus was not wearing black. Well, her dress had _some_ on it, edged in black lace along seam and bustle, but the predominant colour was an absolutely shameless crimson that all but guaranteed that she would be the absolute centre of attention wherever she went. If she was not permitted to be a scholar, then she was certainly not going to go out of her way to pretend.

Even at the time, Nikola had marvelled at her bravery. He had been given to believe that English women were primarily concerned with their reputations and their places within society, and it seemed that for whatever reason, this woman cared for neither. He decided immediately that he should at least introduce himself to her, but was not given the opportunity to do so until the class where they had become a matched pair.

The rest, as they say, was history. Nikola had been brought into the group, and not even particularly against his will at that, and before he quite knew what was happening, he was exchanging theories with James and Helen while John and Nigel provided their own insights – or distractions – where they could. It was still a somewhat strange to those outside The Five, as this evening’s guest had proved, but Helen had worn that red dress again today, and it would only be a matter of time before she revealed her latest project to them, and to be perfectly honest, Nikola was starting to get impatient about it.

++

“I can’t believe you remember that dress so well,” Helen said. “I can barely recall even owning it.”

It was as dark as ever in the tomb, and her arm throbbed, but she had to admit that reliving Nikola’s memories had lightened her spirit considerably. Those days at Oxford had not always been easy, but they had been interesting and, in hindsight, quite a bit of fun. She wouldn’t trade them for anything.

“Well, when you think about it, you must have owned hundreds of dresses over the years. It stands to reason that you’d forget most of them,” Nikola pointed out. “I, on the other hand, have only owned a few dresses, and so I can remember yours, and their effects, quite well.”

“Did you really love me when we were at Oxford?” she said, and hated herself a bit for asking, but it was dark and she was cold, and it was entirely possible that she was about to bleed to death and could therefore be excused for her self-centredness.

“Of course.” He said it like it was the easiest thing in the world. “You were brilliant and fearless. And beautiful, of course, but that’s common enough in people and quite unremarkable most of the time.”

“When you said it in Rome, I thought you were joking,” Helen said. She had never taken well to declarations of love, not since John. Of course Ashley was the exception, but even when James had said it, Helen had been made almost instantly uncomfortable. For some reason, though, when it came from Nikola, it was both entirely unremarkable, because she could feel the truth of it in every fibre of her being, and entirely disturbing, because that sort of passion from Nikola was something she wasn’t sure she could handle on a day-to-day basis.

“I wasn’t,” he said. “And I also meant what I said earlier, about never having been more attracted to you than I was when you offered to revamp me.”

“Stop that,” Helen said, but her heart wasn’t really in it. The stone on top of her arm felt lighter now than it had when she set it on to staunch the blood flow. That probably wasn’t a good sign.

“You know how I feel about recklessness in the name of science,” Nikola said. He was quiet for a moment and then added: “Helen, you have to do something about that arm.”

“Afina is not going to let me bleed to death,” Helen said. “Or starve to death, either. She’ll come back.”

“I’m not sure I like any of the reasons why she’d keep you alive,” Nikola said. There were teeth behind his voice again, but Helen could tell even in the darkness that he was fighting to keep them down. If he stayed human, he would be less hungry.

“Neither do I, to be honest,” Helen admitted. “But alive is better than dead. I haven’t come this far to bleed to death in a tomb in Tanzania.”

“Fair enough,” Nikola said. “Do you have a brilliant plan for when she comes back?”

“Not really,” Helen said. “I’m a bit low on resources at the moment.”

“True,” Nikola said. “There is an appalling lack of metal in the area, and if those panels are powered by electricity, I can’t access the current.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Helen said. “I can’t move right now, or the wound will open again, but if we wait until Afina comes back to make sure I don’t die, I’ll see if I can open up a panel after she leaves again.”

“I’m touched,” said Nikola. “But I still need to get back to ground level.”

“I’m working on it,” Helen said.

“In the meantime, I think you owe me a story,” Nikola said.

“Oh please,” Helen said. “Do you really want to hear about one of your suits?”

“You could,” Nikola said. “But I did miss sixty years of your life. That’s a lot of blank space for me to fill in, and you usually don’t like it when I make up stories about you and Amelia Earhart.”

“Really, Nikola,” Helen began, but he interrupted her.

“If you’re after my ulterior motive, I’ll give it to you,” he said. “You’ve lost too much blood. Not as quickly as I did, but you’re too far away for me to do anything helpful with magnetism. Without being able to see you, I might tear you apart instead of helping.”

“Thanks,” Helen said weakly.

“You know what I meant,” Nikola said. “If you talk to me, I’ll know you’re conscious.”

“I’m too thirsty to talk.”

“We all know what that means,” Nikola said. “Talk.”

“The pit and the pendulum,” Helen said. “Damned if we do, damned if we don’t, but maybe there will be a miracle.”

“If I wasn’t allowed Shakespeare, you are certainly not allowed Poe.”

“It ended well enough, didn’t it?” she said. “And it’s a story.”

“It did, but that’s not how you do things,” Nikola said.

“I do try to avoid the Spanish Inquisition,” Helen said.

“Stop it,” he said. “I meant that that story ends with a miracle. He gets lucky. You don’t wait for miracles, Helen, you make them.”

“I’m not averse to playing it both ways if I have to,” Helen said.

“No,” Nikola said. “Tell me about one of your miracles, and maybe one of us will get inspired.”

“Fine,” Helen snapped. “I wish you weren’t all the way down there.”

“Then you would have an entirely different set of problems,” Nikola said, and the teeth were back again.

“I would think of something,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “And I do love you.”

“I told you to stop that,” she replied. He laughed quietly, and she did her best not to wish she could let him pull her into his arms. Then she cleared her throat and began to tell a story.

++

Helen was half-way through telling Nikola about the time she and Ashley had taken down an entire nest of ten foot wing-spanned olitiaux without any backup when a panel across the room slid open. She gave no thought to escape, since she doubted she could even stand and it was still pitch dark. She felt, rather than saw, the impact of her pack landing beside her, and she groped for it in the darkness even as the door shut again, cutting off the faint bit of hope.

“Helen?” said Nikola, concern in his voice.

“I’m here,” she replied, even though he must have known that by smell. “They’ve given me back my bag. I’m checking it now, but it’s a great deal emptier than it was when they took it.”

“Something is better than nothing,” Nikola said sagely. Helen resisted the impulse to roll her eyes.

It was difficult to unzip the pack with one hand, and more difficult still to stay sitting up, but Helen managed after a few awkward moments. Inside, she found one of her own energy bars, what felt like medical tape, though the texture was completely unfamiliar, and her flashlight.

“They’ve given us a light,” said Helen, judging that the other two items would be of less interest to Nikola. She turned on the beam, and flashed it across the walls. The light was watery, it would be difficult to read the symbols on the wall, but in the confines of the bag, it shone well enough.

Helen bit her tongue when she saw what else was in the pack.

“I have some good news,” she said darkly.

“I’m not sure I like your tone,” Nikola said.

Helen drew out the syringe and an empty plastic bag. The bag was unfamiliar in size and shape, but its function was unmistakeable.

“It’s a blood bag, Nikola,” Helen said. “Apparently, Afina wants you to live.”

++

“My Queen,” said the vampire Lucillus. “What is your bidding?”

Afina surveyed the members of her court that she had awoken. They were her best, her most loyal lieutenants. They had received modern language from Helen’s blood, and had spent a short time above ground before returning to report that their location was isolated beyond what Afina had imagined. She had been angry, frustrated, at first, but now she was reconsidering her options. Her court was hungry, and she was determined to keep Helen to herself, but she was not without options.

“They got here somehow,” Afina said. “Find their transportation. You are pure vampires, the greatest race to have ever walked on earth. What the puny humans built you can surely use. Find their transport and go into the world. Find their cities and undermine them. When I come above ground with what remains of my court, I wish to find the world ready for the taking.”

“It shall be as you say, my Queen,” Lucillus said, bowing from the waist.

With her court dispersed, Afina’s thoughts turned back to her captives. Helen was safely contained and the mongrel Nikola dealt with, for now. Afina had taken steps to ensure that he would live, having decided that if he died, Helen might become more difficult to manage. It might be possible to coerce her using a threat against him, and even vice versa, though she couldn’t for the life of her think what Nikola could possibly do that would be to her benefit. Still, one doesn’t get to be the ruling race of an entire planet without leaving one’s options open. Afina surveyed her sleeping court and decided that all was proceeding according to plan.

++

“Helen, I forbid it,” Nikola said adamantly.

“And how exactly do you propose to enforce that?” Helen asked.

“Don’t bother me with details,” he said. “I won’t take your blood, not even if you toss yourself down here with me.”

“We both know that’s a lie, Nikola,” Helen said. “If I were down there with you, you’d already have attacked me.”

The snarl from the bottom of the chute was completely inhuman and only served to prove her point, so she let it pass without comment.

“Look on the bright side,” Helen said. She wrapped her wounded arm with the medical tape. Already, she could feel the skin knitting beneath it. She tested her fingers and found them only slightly sluggish. Whatever medical technology was in the tape, it was efficient.

“We have a flashlight?” Nikola said, and Helen thought she’d won.

“Very clever,” Helen replied. She rolled up her sleeve, inserted the needle and began to fill the bag with blood. “I was going to point out that since the vampires have given me both a method of feeding you and a battery, they clearly don’t know that you can manipulate the electromagnetic field.”

As soon as she said it, she knew it was a mistake. She felt the needle pull against her skin as Nikola tried to steal it from her, preventing her from helping him.

“Don’t you dare!” she said. “You’ll only make it worse if you pull it out now!”

The pull vanished, and Helen resumed extracting her blood. When the bag was full, she removed the needle and covered the injection mark with a small piece of the tape. She didn’t trust herself to stand yet, so she crawled across the floor of the tomb. She stopped at the edge, lightheaded and annoyed about it.

“You had better catch this, Nikola,” she said. “It’s already been paid for, and if you break it, I will be very put out.”

Then she dropped the bag over the side, like a dark red water balloon, and heard him catch it. She tried not to hear him eat it; it reminded her too much of Afina and her current imprisonment, but in the silence of the tomb, it was impossible to block out. Nikola must have been nearly out of his mind with hunger, because even right after he’d turned, he’d been careful not to alarm the others with his eating habits. Now, it appeared, he had no control left at all.

“Do you need another?” Helen asked when the noises at the bottom of the chute stopped.

“And how exactly were you planning to get the bag back?” Nikola asked, the faint hint of victory in his voice.

“There is a metal tab on it,” Helen pointed out. “You could send it to me.”

“I could,” Nikola said. “But I won’t.”

“You are hopeless,” she said, quite fondly, in spite of herself.

“I knew you cared.”

“Shut up, Nikola.”

He laughed, and she leaned back against the wall at the top of the chute. She shone the flashlight down on him, mostly to reassure herself that he was all right, but he dodged the beam when it reached him.

“Don’t, Helen. I’m hideous,” he said.

“I’ve seen you worse,” she pointed out.

“No, you really haven’t.”

It hung there for a moment, and Helen was forced to admit that while this wasn’t her worst moment, it probably was for Nikola. He had his vampire abilities back, yes, but in the process he had learned what he was worth – not very much – in the eyes of those he had thought would be his compatriots, the very species he had been so tirelessly trying to resurrect. It might not be as bad as the Edison affair, but Helen hadn’t known Nikola then, so she couldn’t really judge.

“Helen, Afina has the map,” Nikola said.

“Hush, Nikola,” Helen said. She lowered her voice without thinking about it, trusting that the echoes in the chute would carry her words down. “She can’t know what it is. And if she does activate it, chances are pretty good she’ll get herself blown up.”

“And us along with her,” Nikola pointed out. “It might almost be worth it.”

“It will definitely be worth it,” Helen said. “But I’m afraid the vampires will take to the surface long before then. Afina has already dispatched the first wave.”

“I hope your people can handle them,” Nikola said. He didn’t sound sarcastic at all, which told Helen how very concerned he was.

“I only wish there was some way of warning them,” Helen said. “They may stand a chance if they know what’s coming.”

“I’m fresh out of ideas,” Nikola said. “But if you want to throw me the flashlight, we can see if I am still good at conducting current.”

Helen pushed the light off the edge and he caught it midair, lowering it to the bottom as though it were made of something delicate and fragile. Before long, blue sparks emanated from the chute, and Helen could see, by the intermittent flashes of light in the darkness, the beatific smile that lit up Nikola’s face.


	3. Danger Takes the Back Seat

**Danger Takes The Back Seat**

 _If Ravi has to spend another minute in his office, he is going to take the rest of the week off entirely._

 _It’s not his fault that New Delhi fell so far behind on their paper work and it is, in his opinion, completely ridiculous that Mumbai has to pick up the slack. The two Sanctuaries operate entirely separately of one another most of the time, New Delhi focusing on mass intake and crowd control while Mumbai deals more with personalized healing and quiet medical research, but every now and then, New Delhi gets in over its head, and it’s Ravi who has to clean up the mess._

 _Today, it’s something about an unexpected jump in the nāga population – the elephant version this time, for which Ravi is grateful as he never wants to bear witness to the snake migration again if he can help it – and New Delhi has the space for them, but not the personnel to do the filing, apparently. Ravi should probably get better at saying no._

 _He is just about to finish the final touches when Vibhor, the boy who guided them to Dr. Zimmerman’s impromptu street performance, comes running through the front door._

 _“Dr. Ravi,” he says, speaking in Hindi. It takes Ravi a moment to switch back from the English he uses to write reports._

 _“Vibhor,” he says, standing up. “What is it? Is your grandmother well?”_

 _“She is fine, thank you.” The boy smiles. “But Kali is nervous. I thought you might like to know.”_

 _The macri was gone, dead at the hands of Edward Forsythe, but through hard work and dedication to ritual, Vibhor had managed to make sporadic contacts with Big Bertha in the months since the flood. Ravi had never seen him do it, but word on the street was that the boy was an excellent dancer._

 _“Has she told you why she is nervous?” Ravi asks. He gestures to a seat, but Vibhor is far too animated to sit. Talking with the abnormal always makes him giddy, and Ravi cannot begrudge the boy his enthusiasm._

 _“No,” Vibhor says. “I am not yet skilled enough to speak to her in words.”_

 _“That will come in time,” Ravi says._

 _“We may not have time,” Vibhor persists, leaning forward. His energy is enthusiasm, yes, but also fear. “Kali has sensed something, a race awakening in a land that does not know her cult. Once, long before she was honoured by my people, she joined with humans to battle these creatures, but they were defeated and fled.”_

 _Ravi_ really _doesn’t like the sound of that. “Thank you, Vibhor,” he says. “I must make some calls.”_

 _“You are welcome,” Vibhor replies, bowing slightly at the waist. “I will dance again, and if I learn anything else, I will bring you word.”_

 _“My thanks,” Ravi says. He does not mean to appear absentminded, to dismiss the boy out of hand, but he is suddenly very sure that he needs to be on the phone as soon as possible._

 _The call rings through to voice mail at the Old City Sanctuary, and Ravi’s misgivings deepen. He sighs, hangs up, and dials London, hoping for the best._

++

“Do I even want to ask?” Kate said as Will handed Sophie out of the car and the Big Guy surreptitiously checked both Kate and the newcomer over for damage.

“Actually, this one’s pretty straightforward,” Will said. “She’s an empath. There were hormone crazy furballs. She helped us contain them.”

“Sounds like fun,” Kate said.

The Big Guy sneezed, as though memory was enough to set off his allergies again. “Not really,” he growled.

“Sophie, what happened?” Will asked as they reached the elevator and headed up to the office level.

“I detected some creatures in trouble,” Sophie said. “So I went to see what it was before I called you in on it. Then, just as I got there, they all went crazy. They panicked, like they were sensing something dangerous all of a sudden, and I guess it knocked me out.”

“Next time, call first,” the Big Guy said. “We must have been right behind you.”

“Yeah, Castor said they nabbed her just before we brought the house down.”

“You went to see him?” Will said. The elevator stopped and they went along the corridor towards Magnus’s office.

The Big Guy peeled off and headed down another hallway. “Sandwiches,” he said brusquely as an explanation.

“And Red Vines!” Kate called after him. She turned to Will, “Yes, I went to see Castor. Yes, I went alone. No, I did not plan to bring home any guests. Yes, I had a plan.”

“I won’t bother you for the details,” Will said, clearly not buying Kate’s last point. “We need to get Henry back here.”

“We can’t,” Kate said. “No cell phones at his retreat.”

“Yeah, he is never allowed to do that again,” Will said. “It’s very inconvenient.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Kate said.

They got to the office and took up chairs, scrupulously avoiding Helen’s desk. Kate only ever sat in it to answer the phone, but Will typically set up shop on one of the chairs by the fire when he and Magnus collaborated. A few moments passed and the Big Guy came in with a tray. He set it down and then the phone rang. He waved Kate off and went to answer it himself.

“Hello?” he said, then “No, she’s on a mission.” He gave an authoritative grunt. “I’m putting you on video conference.”

A few seconds later, Declan McRae appeared on the screens, a woman Kate didn’t recognize hovering behind him.

“Hey, Declan!” Kate said. “What’s up?”

“It’s a long story and I’m going to need you to not ask questions, because I think we’re pressed for time,” Declan said. He did smile when it said it, though, so Kate decided that the world wasn’t going to end any time in the next ten minutes.

“Okay, fire away,” Will said. “Who is with you?”

“This is Mary Kelly,” Declan said. “Yes, _that_ Mary Kelly. Apparently, Druitt made a mistake.”

“How is she still – ” Will started to ask the obvious question and then stopped, remembering Declan’s first request. “Never mind.”

“Actually, that I can answer because it’s important to the rest of the story,” Declan said. “She’s a touch telepath, but there’s something about The Five that makes it possible for her to read their thoughts without touching them. When she met Helen and James at the same time, all of them under considerable stress, the psychic storm was enough to render her comatose. She stayed that way until a few hours ago, when she woke up suddenly.”

“How suddenly?” Sophie said, leaning forward. Kate had almost forgotten the empath was there. “What did it feel like?”

“Like someone shouted,” Mary said. She seemed to be aclimating to the idea of a transatlantic conference call easily enough, and Will was impressed at her adaptability.

“Is that what you sensed?” Will said, looking away from Declan to where Sophie sat.

“It was more like I sensed someone reacting to being shouted at,” she said.

“Which makes sense since you’re an empath and she’s a telepath,” the Big Guy pointed out. “You sense different things.”

“Right,” said Sophie. “But who shouted? And why can we hear them?”

“I think the pertinent question here is where is Helen Magnus?” Declan intervened before speculation could run rampant.

Will groaned and put his head in his hands.

“She and Tesla went to Tanzania to check out an old Praxian settlement,” Will said. “She thought it might have been one of their last strongholds during the war with the vampires. We haven’t been able to make contact with them since they left the landrover.”

“Vampires,” Declan said flatly, but Kate could already see that he was figuring it out. It was a bit unnerving, actually. “Vampires who definitely have Source Blood.”

“Vampires who are extinct,” Kate pointed out.

“We assume they’re extinct,” Will pointed out. “But even without any vamps around, can you imagine what Tesla could get up to in a place like that?”

“I don’t think they’re extinct,” said Mary. “Or if they are, I don’t know what else could be doing this to me.”

“There must be a way of knowing,” Kate said. “Without going to Tanzania, anyway.”

“That would take too long,” Declan pointed out. “Even for me travelling from England.”

“Um, I may have a way around that,” Kate said reluctantly. She wasn’t supposed to play this card. Ever. But this was Magnus.

“Please tell me you don’t have his number,” Will said.

“I’m not even sure if it works!” Kate protested.

“You can’t.” Declan said. “It’s too much of a risk.”

“Why would he give you his number anyway?” the Big Guy asked.

“Because he knew I’d never use it,” Kate said. “Unless it was absolutely necessary. And we don’t know if he’ll answer. We haven’t heard so much as a peep from him since Hollow Earth.”

“If someone doesn’t tell me what’s going on, I am going to be very annoyed,” said Mary Kelly.

Kate paled a bit, as she realized the full implication of what she was about to say. A quick look at Will and Declan revealed that they did not approve, while the Big Guy struggled to keep his expression neutral.

“I’m sorry, Mary,” she said. “But in situations like this, the person we usually call, if we have his number anyway, is Jack the Ripper.”

++

John hadn’t planned to keep that phone. After Hollow Earth, after he had paid his debt, he planned to disappear forever. Or at least until all of Helen’s current protégés had died of old age. It was better for both of them to escape the winter of each other’s company every now and then and make the attempt to live in spring. But at the same time, he knew he wouldn’t dispose of it. He couldn’t cut all ties, not again. And he wouldn’t spy on her, even though he could. He was waiting for a call that might never come, but he would do his best to respect her privacy in the meantime.

When the phone rang, it took him a moment to remember who had the number. Nikola had it, but could not be relied upon to carry a cell phone, as it invariably died when he forgot to turn it off during his various electromagnetic experiments. That left a very short list.

“Freelander,” he whispered, when he finally saw the call display. And then the phone rang twice more while he decided whether to answer it. It had to be an emergency. It had to be about Helen. There was no other reason for Freelander to call. It was why he’d trusted her with the number in the first place. He flipped the phone open, and held it to his ear. “Druitt,” he said.

++

Declan turned off the screen and waited for the explosion he thought was coming, but it never came.

“You saw in my head that he was alive?” he asked.

“I did,” Mary said. “Some faces you can never forget.”

“I’m sorry,” Declan said again. “I can’t even tell you that he’s changed. Only that he’s alive and sometimes useful to the Sanctuary. To Magnus.”

“She trusts him then? Again?” Mary demanded.

“I don’t think she trusts him, exactly,” Declan winced. “At least, not with anyone besides her own self. I know he’s tried to kill Kate once, and he actually tried to kill Magnus last year, but she killed him first and then brought him back.”

“Why in God’s name would she do that?” Mary said, appalled.

“You die when Helen Magnus is ready for you to die,” Declan said. “It’s more complicated, his murdering, than they thought at first. He’s possessed by a creature of some kind that makes him kill.”

“And so he chose to kill women like me?” Mary said. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t find that comforting.”

“You’ll have to take it up with Magnus,” Declan said. “But in the meantime, he will take us where we need to go.”

It hung there between them, Mary’s anger and frustration written all over her face.

“You don’t need to come,” Declan said, his voice softer. “You don’t owe us anything.”

“I owe Helen,” Mary said. “You know it as well as I do. I faced the monster for her once. I can do it again.”

“Let’s find you some better clothes then,” Declan said. “And I think I’ll send a team of marines to Tanzania. They might arrive in time to provide back up if we get lucky.”

“Do you get lucky a lot?” Mary asked.

“We’ll find out,” Declan said, and he led her back up the stairs.

++

The doorbell rang just as Declan hung up, before Will could order Kate not to make the call. She left the room with her phone in her hand, and then the Big Guy was gone to the door, leaving Will alone with Sophie.

“So…you’ve been well?” he asked. He reached for a sandwich.

“Well enough, thank you,” she said. “Keeping busy?”

“Oh, this and that,” he said around a mouthful of tuna salad. “You know how it is.”

“Only when you’re projecting,” Sophie said.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry!” Will said. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Calm down, Will,” Sophie laughed. “It was a joke.”

“Right,” he replied, embarrassed.

Kate came back in to the room, and Will ate the rest of his sandwich in two bites while she sat down again.

“Druitt’s in,” she said. “He’ll be here directly.” Her tone made it clear that she was quoting verbatim on the last part.

“Not immediately?” Will said. Druitt was a teleporter after all.

“I don’t like pressing him for details,” Kate said. “You never know what you might learn.”

“Valid point,” Will said.

“More guests,” the Big Guy said, shepherding Abby into the room.

“Abby?” said Will. “What are you doing here?”

“You forgot to call me, Will,” she said, a smile on her face. “I’m very upset.”

“I really can’t handle jokes today,” Will said.

“You can handle them on regular days?” Kate asked, smirking.

“I’m here on business,” Abby said. “Well, technically I’m on my lunch break because this is out of FBI jurisdiction by about fifteen thousand kilometres, but it’s probably your business, so I’m here.”

“Tanzania?” Kate said.

“You know how many kilometres it is to Tanzania?” Will asked.

“I read,” Kate replied. “Also, I make it a point to know where Magnus is at all times, in case she crashes a helicopter into an oil rig again.”

“Fair enough,” Will said. “Abby, what’s up in Tanzania?”

“I’m not sure exactly,” Abby said, sitting down. “And it’s related to the drug bust we had a couple weeks ago. We’d been following them because we knew they’d be getting a resupply soon. Turns out, their suppliers are Tanzanian, and will not be making the drop because, and I quote, ‘They are all dead. All of them are dead. Like something out of True Blood’ which probably doesn’t mean vampires, because you told me that they were all extinct, except the one who tried to undress me in the foyer the first time I came to see you, but still seemed like something you guys would want to know.”

“It’s probably vampires,” said the Big Guy. Will winced. So much for easing her into it.

“Dammit,” Abby said. “Don’t you people ever do things the easy way?”

“So vampires in Tanzania?” Kate said.

“Yes,” Will said. “Arm up. As soon as Druitt gets here, we’re going.”

“I’ll need to borrow a pair of flats,” Abby said.

“You’re not coming,” Will told her.

“Oh yes I am,” she replied. “You’ll need me to interview the surviving gang members. You don’t have time to profile them all individually. I can do it much faster.”

“Abby, you just said all the gang members are dead.”

She shot him a pitying look. “Will, it is nearly impossible to kill every single member of gang. There are always people on the outside who can step in once the alphas go down.”

“Fine, get yourself a pair of shoes,” he said. “Sophie?”

“Oh, I’m good,” she said. “I heard as much of them as I want to. I’ll stay here and keep tabs on Old City in case anything shows up. If vampires make it this far, they’re bound to scare something, and I’ll sense them.”

“Great,” Will said. “Big Guy?”

“I’m already packed,” he said. “I always have an emergency rescue mission bag ready to go when Magnus is in the field.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Will said. “I’ll be right back.”

Left alone, Abby and Sophie stared at each other for a few moments, and then Abby leaned forward.

“Wait,” she said. “Who are you?”

++

John appeared on the doorstep of the London Sanctuary and raised his hand to the knocker. The shield was down, since he was invited, but his comings and goings in London were significantly less frequent than his trips to Old City, and he thought that protocol had best be observed where possible. He didn’t much care what the outcome of this expedition was, because he was already working on his own back-up plan, but there was no need to tell Helen that, and thus it was probably necessary to aid her in any way he could. If he didn’t, she would be suspicious.

He’d left his work, gone to one of his other safe-houses, and picked up what he thought he would need, though Miss Freelander had been decidedly less than generous with the details. Something about Nikola, he’d managed to glean, and the idea of Helen traipsing around Africa with their old friend was enough to stir John’s anger anew. He controlled it, a brief stopover in Amsterdam and a young woman stumbling alone out of one of the cannabis coffee shops had seen to that...but he still simmered.

Declan opened the door a few moments after John knocked, his face closed and cold, better than even the most deliberately cruel mask James had been able to pull over his face at will. That thought brought the hints of a cruel smile to John’s lips, twisting his face in a hateful sort of glee as he considered all the sharp-pointed barbs he could hurl at Declan about the quality of James’s teaching. It would serve absolutely no purpose, of course, and if Declan was half as clever as James typically liked his conquests to be, he’d be able to come up with something scathing enough to send John back over the edge, but it was entertaining to consider.

“You ready to go then?” Declan said. He clutched his laptop in one hand and a small bag in the other. All business, as John had thought, and perhaps a little more.

“Eager to get rid of me?” John said. “Hardly polite, given the desperation Miss Freelander seemed to feel when she called me.”

“She was feeling a trifle awkward at the time.”

John’s head whipped to the side as he looked in the direction of the speaker. His eyes narrowed, and then widened in recognition. His stomach twinged, and this time he let the cruel smile curl his lips without trying to contain it.

“Miss Kelly,” he said, bowing grandiosely to her. “Imagine my surprise.”

“I don’t have to imagine it, John Druitt,” she said. “For I can sense it from where I stand. You’ve been well, I take it?”

“No complaints,” John said, “save a slight ache in my chest in damp weather.”

“Pity,” said Mary. “Modern medicine must not be as wonderful as Helen hoped it would be.”

“Oh, it does enough,” John said. He needed to kill someone. Soon. The girl in Amsterdam had not been enough to sate him against this temptation.

“Shall we go then?” Mary said, extending her hand to him.

She shuddered when he touched her, mere fingertips against her palm, but he knew that the revulsion was not the result of mere physical contact. He let the smile become a feral grin, seized Declan about the neck, imagined the library at Old City, and disappeared.

++

“Are you okay?” Kate said to Mary as quietly as she could. Declan was looking at the maps Magnus and Tesla had left behind, while the Big Guy methodically sorted through the guns that Declan brought with him. The desert wind blew sand against her face, but at least since it was night time, the temperature was cool.

“I’m fine,” Mary said. “But you know he’s gone off to kill someone, right?”

“That’s why we only call him when we’re desperate,” Kate said. “I don’t like it, but I like the idea of Helen taking on a bunch of vampires by herself even less.”

“Why don’t you just kill him and be done with it?” Mary asked.

“His life isn’t mine to take,” Kate said quietly. “It’s hers.”

“And how many others will suffer while she waits?” Mary demanded.

“I don’t know,” Kate said. “Did you get anything out of him while you were with him?”

“No,” Mary said. “He’s planning something, but all I got was rage. It blots out his every motivation.”

John had used the maps to take them as far as where Magnus and Tesla were supposed to have left the Landrover. It was clear enough that something had been parked here once, and there were certainly more than two people’s worth of footprints in the sand, but the car was gone. Kate supposed that if world domination was something the vampires felt they could achieve, learning to hotwire a car couldn’t be that difficult. Declan was pouring over the map to try to see which route they might have taken. Kate wasn’t a bad tracker, but she lacked desert experience, and Declan had that in spades.

“Are you sensing them?” Kate said. “The vampires, I mean?”

“Yes,” Mary said. “Some have left, but there is a very strong presence underground.”

“Can you tell if Magnus or Tesla is here?”

“No,” Mary said. “For all I know, they are contributing to what makes the presence here so strong.”

“Mary, can you guide us in, do you think?” Declan asked. “This is an awful map.”

“I can try,” Mary said, looking towards the hills. “It’s this way.”

“Wait,” said the Big Guy. “Before we go, Mary, can you find out how to use the weapons by touching Declan?”

“Yes,” she said. She looked at Declan, who shifted uncomfortably. “I won’t be a good shot, but I’ll at least understand how it works. Do you mind?”

“Does that matter?”

“Well, no,” Mary said. “But I like to ask. If you focus on learning to shoot, I won’t have to read too deeply, and I won’t get anything you don’t want to tell me.”

“Do it,” Declan said. He braced himself, hands clasped around the grip of his weapon, as if that would help him focus.

Mary reached out, and very gently laid her hand on top of his. She flinched as his thoughts hit her, and closed her eyes. Her free hand went to her hip, where a side arm would be, and she mimed drawing it. When she opened her eyes again, she looked straight at Declan, and Kate had to look away. No one should have to bare their thoughts, but it seemed that reading them was no easier.

“Right then,” Declan said. “Let’s go.”

++

“That was really uncomfortable,” Abby said, once she’d finished checking to make sure that all her limbs had made the trip with her. Will couldn’t help smiling at her. The first teleport was the worst.

“They get easier,” he said.

“Working with Jack the Ripper gets easier?”

“No, that’s pretty much always uncomfortable,” he admitted. “But the actual teleportation isn’t so bad.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” she said. “He did put us in Dar es Salaam, right?”

“I have no idea,” Will said. “You were the one who told him where you needed to go.”

“Okay then,” Abby said. “We’ll assume he hasn’t dropped us off in the wrong place. How do I look?”

“Great,” said Will. Abby rolled her eyes. “And also like a tourist trying to score,” he amended. “How about me?”

“Will, you couldn’t look like anything besides a frat boy if your life depended on it,” Abby said. “Fortunately, that’s pretty much exactly what we need.”

“No getting kidnapped this time, okay?”

“Deal.”

Technically, Abby wasn’t a field agent, though she had of course taken all the appropriate classes at Quantico and kept her qualifications up to date. She was a consultant, but ever since she brought that first case to Will, and certainly since their incredibly botched dates, she’d made sure that she was ready for the unexpected. If she was forced to admit it, she rather liked being out from behind her desk, putting her skills into play in real time instead of over the phone or in the classroom. Plus, the Big Guy assured her, Will had been green once too, and he managed well enough.

She had never been to Dar es Salaam, but she had taken the time to get a vague idea of the layout of the city. She’d even brought a guide book, though she doubted that she and Will would have any time to take in the sights. She’d used one of the pictures in it as John’s guide, but apparently he was more familiar with the city than she was, because he’d set them down much closer to the seedy part of the city than the tourist guide seemed to want them to get. Fortunately, the map was comprehensive, and before she and Will had gone far, she was reacquainted with where they were.

It didn’t take them very long to attract attention.

The drug laws in Tanzania were strict, but that only served to make the smugglers more creative. There were all sorts of codes, and even though Abby’s Swahili was guide book basic, she still knew what to say if they ran into trouble. Plus, Will had one of his stun guns on him, which was reassuring.

“I think you took a wrong turn somewhere,” said a voice. The English was heavily accented, but the speech was clear enough.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Abby said, affecting a somewhat more vapid tone than she liked to admit she was capable of. “I’d say the view from here can only be improved.”

Will was tense beside her, but she kept her face deliberately open.

“Well now,” said the voice, “let’s see what we can do about the scenery.”

Two men with guns stepped out of the shadows on either side of Abby and Will. Abby grabbed Will’s hand when she saw him reach for the stunner and squeezed as hard as she could without making it look like she was afraid.

“If you’ll come with me?” The speaker stepped into the light. He was tall, but not particularly broad, and he had a wicked scar across his face, like he’d been slashed with a nail or a claw. It was vibrantly red, not long healed, and Abby knew that he must have seen the vampires. She felt Will relax, finally, as he realized the same thing.

“We’d be pleased to,” Will said, and they followed.

++

“Do we have an actual plan yet?” Kate said after they’d been walking for about thirty minutes. “I mean, Tesla is hard enough to kill, and he was only part vampire. How are we supposed to kill a lot of them?”

“I don’t think there are a lot of them,” Mary said. “Not yet, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Declan asked.

“If they were extinct, they couldn’t have been living out here,” Mary said. “Someone would have noticed.”

“Not necessarily,” the Big Guy grumbled. “Many abnormals live in secrecy, whether by choice or because they have to.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Mary said. “Even in my day, it was difficult to talk to abnormals and I was one myself. But at the same time, I don’t think the vampires have been awake the whole time. You’ve said that they would be bent on world domination. Why would they wait patiently below while we grew more and more technologically advanced?”

“That’s a good point,” Declan said. “So they were, what, sleeping?”

“If the Praxians can bring people back from the dead, it stands to reasons that the vampires can do something similar,” Kate said. “Maybe they were in some sort of…” she trailed off, looking at Mary.

“Coma,” said Mary. “They were in a coma, like I was, and when they woke, it was enough to awaken me as well.”

“If they’re not all awake yet, we might have a shot at this,” Kate said. “Well, a better shot, anyway.”

“I hate to be the one to say this, but if Magnus is down there with newly awoken vampires who haven’t eaten in a while, I don’t think it matters how many of them there are,” Declan said.

Kate and the Big Guy exchanged a look.

“Let’s go,” Kate said. “We probably don’t have that much more time to waste.”

++

Unlike the last time Abby was taken off somewhere at gun point, Will actually had a good feeling about this. As much as it pained him to admit it, she had actually put together a good mission plan, even though it was insanely dangerous and could go pear-shaped at any moment. He wished the plan had included more people, preferably that SWAT team Declan seemed to have on permanent retainer, but as long as Abby was able to read the situation, they should be all right, and Abby was very good at her job.

As they were led into the café, Will couldn’t help but note the complete lack of other exits and the bottleneck that would invariably form if they tried to flee out the front. The key, then, was to not flee. Abby wasn’t focusing on the room or location, relying on him to cover that part. Instead, she watched their companions. The scarf she had worn covered most of her face, disguising her movements and letting her examine the men much more closely than she would have been able to if her head had been uncovered.

He saw the exact moment she figured out who the leader was. They had tried for subterfuge, and the man in charge was not the one who had accosted them in the street. Instead, he was one of their escorts. Now that Will knew what he was looking for, he was able to see the way everyone’s eyes slid towards him before they moved, waiting for the small nods that showed his approval.

Abby seated herself in one of the available chairs without waiting for an invitation to do so, and turned to look directly at him.

“You have a supply problem,” she said, quite brazenly. Will was torn between exploding with pride and dying of his nerves.

“You are not a tourist,” he said, easing the safety off his rifle.

“I am not,” she said. “I can make your life very difficult, if I want to. But I don’t want to do that. All I want is some information.”

“Why should I tell you anything?” he said. “Why shouldn’t I just shoot you?”

“Because no good American agent ever travels alone,” Abby said. Will covered a smile. She neglected to mention which agency she was an agent for, and it was clear that everyone in the room assumed she was in the CIA, and therefore had some jurisdiction to back up her bluff. “How much company would you like today?”

The drug lord studied her, and then lowered the gun, though his cronies didn’t move. “What do you want to know?”

“You suffered a few setbacks earlier today,” Abby said. “In terms of personnel. I’d like to know the details.”

“If I tell you, will you grant me immunity?” he said. There was fear in the room, from all sides, and Will knew that Abby could read it.

“I’ll do my best,” she said, which was another lie, but Will hardly cared.

“They weren’t human,” he said. “I know that seems crazy, but they weren’t human.”

“Where did they come from?” Abby asked.

“They didn’t say,” he replied. “They just wanted passage to Asia or Europe, quick and cheap.”

“Did you give it to them?”

“Not right away,” he said. “They killed sixteen of my men before we could escape. I assume they took the boat.”

“How did you know they weren’t human?” Will asked.

“Their faces,” said their other escort. “And the way they spoke.”

“Damn their faces,” said the man with the scar. “It was their claws that should have clued you in.”

“Can you track the boat?” Will asked.

“It’s a smuggling vessel. It’s not supposed to be tracked.”

“Take us to it,” Abby said. “You do have another boat, right?”

Will shot her a look that said this might not be a good idea, but she wasn’t looking at him.

“Why in the world would I want to chase them?” the drug lord demanded.

“Because it will guarantee you immunity,” Abby said.

“I could just shoot you,” he pointed out, “and then disappear.”

Abby narrowed her eyes. Whatever card she planned to play next, it had better be a good one. Will could tell that everyone was hanging on their last nerve.

“And who,” she said slowly, “who, exactly, would go into business with a man who doesn’t even seek revenge when it’s offered to him?”

It hung there, and Will hardly dared to breathe.

“Neither of you had better get seasick.”

++

Kate picked up the sat phone on the second ring. Will spoke quickly and quietly, leading Kate to believe he and Abby were in an uncomfortable, if manageable, situation, and then hung up before she could ask any questions beyond “Are you guys okay?”.

“Well?” said Declan.

“Oh, it’s vampires all right,” Kate said. “Will said Abby got the drug dealers to talk. The vamps were looking for cheap passage to Europe or Asia, and when the dealers said no, things got bloody.”

“What are they doing?” the Big Guy asked.

“Abby got them on board another boat, and they’re following the vampires,” Kate said. “They’re hoping to contain them.”

“I hope they have a lot of bullets,” Declan said.

“Will said something about Molotov cocktails,” Kate said. “They might not even have to board.”

“Good,” Declan said. “I think our plan should be similar, if possible. The more we blow up, the fewer we have to take on hand to hand. I got kicked by Ashley once, and that was bad enough.”

“And I am fresh out of rocket launchers,” Kate agreed.

“I have an idea,” the Big Guy said. “But Magnus is going to hate it.”

“I don’t care,” Declan said. “What is it?”

“When she and Tesla first activated the second layer of the map, it detected their vampire blood and tried to nuke them,” he said. “If it could detect vampire blood in them, it can detect it in actual vampires. Magnus took it with her. We just have to find it, turn it on, put it close to a vampire and then…”

He trailed off.

“Run?” suggested Kate.

“Let’s burn that bridge when we get to it,” Declan said. “Magnus first, map second, and if we’re still alive, we’ll worry about what comes third.”

“Do you think Tesla’s on our side or theirs?” Kate asked, a little uncomfortably.

“Probably neither,” said the Big Guy. “Mary will know better, though, once we get close enough for her to separate him.”

“Yes, I can do that,” Mary said. “It’ll probably be more useful than my shooting.”

“Just stay in the middle,” Declan said. “And be ready to run.”

++

“Nikola, she’s coming back,” Helen said as the heavy stone door slid open again. All signs of electricity ceased.

“Helen, Nikola,” said Afina. “I trust you’ve enjoyed our hospitality? It’s somewhat limited here, I’ll admit, but when we’ve taken the surface, it will be beyond your wildest dreams.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Nikola said. “I’ve always had a good imagination.”

“Silence,” Afina said. “You live because you may be of use. And that use might be waning as we speak.”

“What are you talking about?” Helen demanded.

“We have company, Helen!” Afina said, a violent joy lighting her face in the darkness. “Your friends have come to rescue you.”

“You shouldn’t underestimate them,” Nikola said. “Trust me.”

Afina ignored him. “Helen, now I can wake more of my court. I’m in your debt again, it seems. You keep providing for the feast.”

She laughed as the door slid shut.


	4. Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary

**Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary**

 _Helen Magnus sits in a chair next to Mary’s bed, the soft firelight glinting on her golden hair. She is, in theory, practicing for a lecture she is due to give at the women’s college the following week, but in truth, she finds that saying her words aloud to Mary makes them seem more reasonable, more real. She deviates often from her notes, telling old stories about the events that had led her to her conclusions, and laughing to herself at the memories._

 _Helen doesn’t have a great many people to talk to anymore. Her father, gone for more than four decades now, has left her an excellent reputation and a house with all the space and privacy she required, but little in the way of social standing. James does not care to reminisce about the old days, finding even the fondest of her recollections too painful to endure. Nigel and Nikola are gone, off in the world wreaking havoc in their own separate ways, and only darkening her door step when they needed something._

 _Helen does not lack for companionship, but there are few people to whom she could tell the whole truth. Stories about whiskey addled dragons and overenthusiastic bishopfish are hardly proper dinner conversation, even with the details carefully edited. She finds she has few people with whom she could laugh._

 _Mary doesn’t answer, of course. She sleeps on and on, as the days turned to weeks and months and years. Her physical condition does not change, much to the consternation of James, who purports that her muscles should be well atrophied by now. He has even gone so far as to take a blood sample, against Helen’s wishes, in the hope of duplicating whatever keeps Mary hale for his own latest project, but so far his results have not been encouraging._

 _She merely waits, sleeping, as time dragged on. Helen doesn’t change either, though she is more and more tempted to do something to her hair. They wait together, one sleeping and one waking, and the world changes slowly around them._

 _Someday, James thinks, Mary’s mind will heal itself and she will wake. Helen doesn’t know if she can wait in one place for that long. There are whispers of war on the continent again, and Helen knows that this time it will be worse, though she’s not sure exactly how. She doesn’t know how Mary read her thoughts that last day, but she doesn’t doubt it happened. She can only hope that Mary understands why Helen has to leave._

 _She’s not leaving just yet, though. She will see England, and her fledging Sanctuary Network, through the brewing war. And while she lays down stores against the inevitable, she will sit here, in this room. She will read lectures and tell stories, she will laugh and open her heart. She doesn’t know if Mary hears her, but it does her good to speak._

++

Mary focused on the Big Guy’s feet, doing her best not to trip as she reached out to see if the vampiric thoughts were getting any stronger. She had to admit that walking in trousers was less trouble than walking in skirts, but she was still pretty sure that closing her eyes to concentrate would result in falling over a rock, and probably firing the gun by accident as well. Splitting her concentration was easy enough, but moving forward at the same time was another matter.

“She’s triumphant,” Mary said.

“Magnus?” Declan asked, not turning to look at her. His training had reasserted itself, apparently, and he was completely focussed on the goal.

“No,” said Mary. “The Vampire Queen.”

“They have queens?” Kate asked. “Like bees?”

“No, unfortunately,” Mary said. “Just like people. But at least I’m fairly sure that she’s the only one who’s awake in there, besides Helen and Nikola.”

“You can sense them?” the Big Guy asked.

“More or less,” Mary said. “They are a lot fainter. If you want me to see more deeply, we’re going to have to stop moving.”

“We’re too exposed out here for that,” Declan said. “It’ll have to wait until we find cover.”

“There!” said Kate, pointing ahead. Mary squinted, following her line of sight.

It was a cave, and would provide either cover or entrance. Declan altered course slightly, and the four of them came at the opening from the side, pressing against the rock wall. Very, very slowly, Declan looked around the corner. When his eyes were not enough to pierce the gloom, he reached for his flashlight. Mary held her breath. She couldn’t sense anything close by, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be a surprise waiting for them.

“I think we’re clear,” Declan said. He didn’t quite speak at a whisper, but it was a near thing. “Kate, follow me. We’ll come back if it’s clear.”

The Big Guy grunted, and moved closer to Mary. He carried no weapon, but Mary didn’t doubt the strength of his hands.

Declan and Kate went into the cave, and it felt like forever before they emerged again.

“We’re good,” Kate said, her posture slightly relaxed. “The cave is empty, and then there’s a door.”

They all walked into the cave. It wasn’t natural, Mary could see now, though she could not have named the tool that had hewn the walls. The cuts weren’t entirely smooth, as though someone had endeavoured to make the cave _seem_ natural, but they were uniform in a way that nature couldn’t have produced.

“Vampire work?” she asked.

“No,” Kate said. “The Praxians built this place. When the vampires took it over, I don’t imagine they made too many changes to the outside.

“It’s the changes to the inside that I’m worried about,” Declan said. “Those Egyptian tombs had traps and curses aplenty, and they were probably just cheap imitations of what the vampires could do. We will have to be careful.”

“Got it,” Kate said, a grin on her face. Mary didn’t doubt for a moment that Kate was actually looking forward to this, mortal peril or no. Mary had to admit that Kate’s bravado was making her feel better.

“Let’s go,” Declan said.

Again in single file, and staying close to the walls, they headed further into the cave. Before long, they came to a chamber door, carved with glyphs that Mary couldn’t even begin to guess the meanings of.

“Look,” said Kate, pointing at the ground in the middle of the cave, where a dusting of sand covered the rock.

“Footprints,” Declan said.

“Those are the doc’s,” Kate said. “Only she would wear boots like that to a place like this.”

“Here are more,” Declan said. “Tesla?”

“I think it must be,” Kate said. “No scuff marks, so they didn’t force the door open.”

“There’s a humming noise,” the Big Guy said. “If it’s electromagnetic, he could have opened it that way.”

“Do you smell anything?” Kate asked.

The Big Guy sniffed at the air, then turned to her. “No.”

“Damn,” said Declan.

“Can we get through this way?” Mary asked.

“Not without Tesla,” Declan said. “Or some C4. Which I do have, but I am reluctant to blow things up in a cave unless I have to.”

“Works for me,” Kate said. She gestured with her flashlight. “The tunnel continues that way. I say we keep going and see if we find anything else.”

“I don’t see that we have much of a choice,” Declan said. “I don’t like going into enemy territory without a better idea of where the exits are.”

“Just keep the C4 handy in case we need to make one,” Kate said.

The Big Guy rolled his eyes and followed her, leaving Mary and Declan to bring up the rear. “Americans,” Declan muttered.

“I heard that!” Kate said.

“Anything new from our hosts?” Declan said to Mary. She shook her head.

“No, there’s no change,” she said. “But wait a minute, Kate, stop.”

Kate stopped walking forward and froze. “What is it?” she asked.

“Helen,” Mary said. “And Nikola too. I can sense them. He’s very happy about something, and very sad at the same time.”

“Typical,” Kate muttered.

“Is he on our side?” Declan pressed.

Mary closed her eyes. “Yes,” she said, letting her breath out. “At least he is completely loyal to Helen, for whatever that is worth.”

“And they’re together?” the Big Buy asked.

“So far as I can tell,” Mary said. “They’re back in that room we couldn’t get into.”

“Declan,” Kate started.

“No,” Declan interrupted. “We’re not blowing anything up until we have another exit, Freelander. It’s a bad idea and you know it.”

“Fine,” Kate grumbled. “Then let’s go find one.”

Kate turned around and found herself face to face with a vampire.

++

“I’ve been thinking,” said Nikola in a calm voice that grated on Helen’s nerves. Afina had just casually announced that her people were about to be eaten, and he was still theorizing about God knew what.

“Now is not the time, Nikola,” she said. Her wrist was healed, more or less, which meant she could get up and pace again. It didn’t accomplish much, but it did make her feel better.

“Oh, I think it is,” Nikola said. “I’ve been thinking about Bhalasaam, and how the vampires there were killed.”

“James told me,” Helen said. “French, Russian and Spanish troops and cannon.”

“Oh come on, Helen!” Nikola said. “Do you really think that was enough? To take on the greatest species that ever lived? Even if they were diminished, they would have been able to handle a few cannon embankments.”

Helen paused in her pacing and considered it. Damn the man, he was right. There had to have been something else.

“Fortunately for you,” Nikola continued, “while I was engaged in my efforts to resurrect my race, I did quite a bit of research into that battle.”

“Which you neglected to share,” Helen said.

“Inform you how to destroy my people before I’d even finished bringing them back?” She could just imagine what he looked like, even though he was still separated from her in the dark. She sort of wanted to wipe the smirk off his face. “I can’t imagine why I forgot to tell you.”

“Nikola,” she said. “Spill.”

“Fine,” he said, only perfunctorily disgruntled. “It wasn’t the French or Spanish that did them in. It was the Indian militia, the troops on the ground. Most of them were related, you see, all members of the same clan, and they shared a certain trait that the vampires found most…unappetizing.”

“Their blood?” Helen said. “There was something in their blood?”

“I wondered, you know, how mere humans could take down my ancestors.” It never ceased to amaze Helen that Nikola could speak fondly of things that tried to kill him. It had been annoying during World War II, when Nikola professed a quiet admiration for the determined resolution of the Cabal, and it was infuriating now. “It couldn’t have been just the conviction of faith. I mean, that’s enough to get you started, but it helps to have something you can back it up with. And it would have to be everywhere at once. Or at least in enough places to make a difference.”

“What are you talking about, Nikola?” Helen asked.

“Cast your mind back, if you will, to the fourth century BC,” Nikola said in an expansive tone.

She was going to kill him, right as soon as she got him out of the pit. She began shredding the backpack Afina had tossed into the tomb. If nothing else, it prevented her from trying to strangle him from across the room. When she had done as much as she could, she took off her coat and began to shred that as well.

“Alexander the Great was dead, yes, but he left behind him a legacy unlike anything the world had ever seen before,” Nikola continued. Helen began to tie knots. “Macedonian DNA spread across the world. Greek, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian and Indian, all with same potential locked inside their genes.”

“What is that?” Helen asked, losing patience.

“I have no idea,” Nikola said. “I got distracted by a thing. But that’s not really the point. The point is that the gene spelled the beginning of the end for the vampires. By the time the Romans came around, and that conviction I was talking about earlier, the gene had spread far enough that the vampires couldn`t control it any more, particularly in India, where clan and caste are held in such high regard.”

“How does any of this help us, Nikola?” Helen said. She tested the strength of the knots she’d tied, and decided that they might hold, if they were lucky. “Catch this.”

She threw the makeshift rope over the side of the chute and wrapped as little of it as she could manage around her waist. She felt Nikola test the weight.

“This is never going to hold, Helen,” he said.

“Do you have a better idea?” she asked.

“No,” he said, and she had just enough time to brace herself before he began to climb.

It took only moments, and then he was beside her, the flashlight held between human teeth. He was looking at her bandaged wrist, but it was human concern and not vampiric hunger that was written on his face.

“I’m fine, Nikola,” she said. It was a relief to speak at normal volume again, to not have to shout at him down the chute. And, of course, it was nice to have him back at ground level.

“You are,” he said, but he took her hand anyway and pressed a light kiss to the bandage.

“You were saying something about Alexander the Great,” she prompted him, determined to keep her voice level despite the butterflies that were suddenly threatening to unsettle her stomach.

“Oh yes, that,” he said, dropping her hand and smiling at her in a way that would have been devastating in proper lighting but looked demonic when lit only by the flashlight. “Long story short, the gene did not do well in Europe against the plague, but it seemed to do all right in India.”

“Nikola,” she said. She took both his shoulders without thinking about it, and felt the old, familiar strength coiled there, the vampire’s strength. “How does that help us?”

“Well, Helen,” Nikola said. He shone the flashlight on his own face, lighting the picture of innocence he was affecting for her benefit. She was definitely going to kill him. “It’s an Indian gene. Aren’t we about to be rescued by your token Indian?”

++

Will had not meant to fall asleep. In fact, under the circumstances, sleep was a pretty bad idea. But it had been 18 hours, one teleport, one gang infiltration and a hostile take-down since he’d had any rest, and once the boat was out to sea, it was only a matter of time before the rocking of the waves and the fact that he was sitting down resulted in an inadvertent nap.

The boat, which was a ship by real standards, in that it had a captain and a crew, was packed to the gunwales with heroin. Under normal circumstances, this would have made Will very nervous, if only because he didn’t fancy trying to explain to any authorities that might find them that he wasn’t actually a drug dealer. This time, though, he was nervous for entirely different reasons, and it took only a soft noise to wake him from his unplanned rest.

Abby was laughing. Giggling, actually. With the drug lord. Deliberately, Will reached out and pinched his own arm as hard as he could. It hurt. So he wasn’t hallucinating or still asleep.

“Oh, Will!” said Abby, seeing he was awake from where she sat at the small table. “You’re awake! Saalman was just telling me about the time he escaped from some Somali pirates. It sounded like it was exciting.”

“I’m sure it was,” Will said. He did his very best to develop telepathy so that he could ask her what the hell she was doing without being overheard, but of course nothing happened. He sighed. “Are we catching up?”

“As far as I can tell, yes,” Abby said. “Though I haven’t been to the bridge.”

“I have to have some secrets,” Saalman said. “And if you’ll excuse me, I have a few things to check on.”

He exited through the door, and Will heard the unmistakable sound of a deadbolt being closed.

“Well, this is just perfect,” he said. “I don’t suppose you have a plan to get us out of here?”

“Not exactly,” Abby said. “I figured you should do something to contribute.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Did I miss anything? Besides pirates?”

“I’ve pretty much got Saalman convinced that he doesn’t need to take on the vampires face to face,” Abby said. “He was determined to extract his revenge by hand, but I told him that the rocket launcher they have jury rigged on top of the bridge is more than suitable to establish his street cred.”

“What if that’s not enough?” Will said. “I mean, what if they survive?”

“Then we hope for sharks,” Abby said, spreading her hands. “Will, I have no idea. Don’t you have ocean abnormals you can call on?”

“Not without back-up dancers,” Will said under his breath.

“Well then,” Abby said, “I think we should worry about catching them first. And then maybe worry about getting out afterwards.”

“We still have the sat phone,” Will pointed out. “So at least I could theoretically call someone and tell them where we are. If I knew. Which I don’t.”

“Are you always this grumpy on missions?”

“When they involve the ocean, yes, I am,” Will said. “I have a bad track record.”

“At least we have a window,” Abby said. “I can see oil drilling platforms, but no logos. Still, it can’t be that hard to find someone if you know they’re near an oil rig, right?”

Will resisted the urge to bash his head against the table. Not even Henry was this optimistic.

The door creaked a warning, and Will heard the latch get thrown back. Saalman came in and offered his arm to Abby rather politely.

“We’ve sighted them,” he said. “Come with me, both of you.”

Will followed Saalman and Abby on deck, squinting as the sunlight glinting off the ocean momentarily blinded him. They walked along a narrow walkway, and then climbed a ladder to the bridge. There was a man at the wheel, but Will didn’t see anyone else. He didn’t for a moment think that that made them any safer.

“There,” said Saalman, passing the telescope to Abby and pointing.

The boat the vampires had commandeered was a much smaller craft than the ship Will and Abby had ended up on. It was faster, but had a smaller range. The vampires might be smart, but they still needed fuel.

“They’re making for that rig over there,” said the helmsman, his English remarkably free of an accent. He probably had some education, which was reassuring given that he was navigating the ship.

“You have to fire on them before they reach it,” Will said.

“Do I?” said Saalman.

“Will!” Abby said. She turned to Saalman. “It would be really, really good, if you could, is what my colleague is trying to say. You would be saving lives.”

Saalman looked at her for a while, and then spoke rapidly in Swahili into his radio. Above them, Will heard the mounted rocket launcher fire up and spin to face the rig. He looked up instinctively, and in the time he was distracted, Saalman raised his own weapon and pointed it at Abby.

“And now I think it’s time you left,” he said. “There’s a boat my men have prepared for you. They may have even remembered to include water. Particularly if you remain cooperative.”

Abby didn’t even flinch, just looked at Will, and reminded him with a nod that they weren’t that far off shore and still had the sat phone. There was no point in making a scene, and they wanted off the ship anyway.

“Easy,” Will said, raising his hands above his head. “Easy, we don’t want to be any trouble.”

“After you.” Saalman gestured with his gun, and Will preceded him out of the bridge and back down the ladder to where the lifeboat sat waiting.

Once he climbed in, Saalman pushed Abby after him, and then raised the boat off the deck and over the side.

“Thank you for your help in tracking them down,” Saalman said. Then he kicked the winch, and the lifeboat plummeted down to the ocean below.

Will coughed as the air rushed out of him, forced out by the impact, and grabbed on to Abby more tightly. Both of them, and the water bottle, stayed in the boat.

“You good?” she said, once they were settled.

“Yeah, this is perfect,” Will said. “Exactly my plan.”

He looked towards the boat the vampires had taken. It was nearly at the rig.

“I wish we’d got to talk to them, even if only for a bit,” he said contemplatively. “It would be interesting to psychoanalyze the greatest abnormal species that’s ever lived.”

“They’re ancient vampires with Nazi complexes that would put actual Nazis to shame, Will,” Abby said, a note of incredulity in her voice. “I’m pretty sure they’re all narcissists.”

“Fair enough,” Will said. He turned back towards the ship. “They’re about to fire.”

On the ship, the rocket launcher was prepped and sat waiting for the target lock. Will could see the gunner from where they sat on the ocean below, and he hoped the man was up to the task. The gun fired, and the rocket arced through the sky, a perfect half-circle between the ship and its target. The explosion wasn’t too impressive from this distance and vantage point, but the stolen boat was reduced to reassuringly small pieces upon impact, and Will took a moment to close his eyes and breathe.

“There’s something moving in the water,” Abby said, and Will sighed before opening his eyes again. Nothing was ever easy. “I think there are vampires in the water.”

“That’s not a vampire,” Will said. A giant tentacle broke the surface and wrapped itself around one of the larger pieces of wreckage. It plucked a vampire off the questionable safety of the flotsam, and dragged it below the waves. Will swore: “Bloody hell!”

One by one, the surviving vampires were pulled beneath the water until only the flaming wreckage remained. Men came from the rig in a rescue boat, thankfully not launched quickly enough to interfere, but by the time they arrived, the tentacles were gone back under the water. The ship behind them didn’t linger, and Will heard its engines fire full throttle as it headed for open water.

“Will!” said Abby, finally alarmed. The vampire squid was a familiar dark shape beneath the ocean, and it was coming straight for them.

There was a soft impact against the side of the hull, and then the boat began to move, pulled gently towards the rig by the tentacles that wrapped carefully around the bow.

“Don’t worry,” Will said. “I have no idea how it got here, but it’s an old friend.”

++

Kate had the gun raised and opened fire before she paused to think. Declan flanked her and began to shoot as well, the sharp staccato of firing pin to bullet casing echoing off the walls of the cave. Mary had the presence of mind to maintain her hold on the flashlight, and illuminated their targets. The Big Guy hovered impatiently behind. With this much crossfire, he couldn’t join the fray and fight barehanded as he preferred, but Kate knew she’d have to reload eventually, and the Big Guy was more than welcome to join the dance at that point.

One of the vampires got past Declan’s guard and sliced for his face with its claws. Instinctively, Kate set her shoulder against his, pushing him over. He didn’t fall, though he did stop firing for a moment, but it did get him out of the way, and the claw scraped across her face instead. Kate bit back a cry of pain and felt the blood on her cheek. She hoped that vampires didn’t react to blood like sharks did. The last thing they needed was a feeding frenzy.

Instead, the vampire whose claw had cut her drew back from the fray and started screaming. It was an absolutely terrible noise, worse than nails on a chalkboard or any other cliché Kate had heard used to describe uncomfortable sounds. A fraction of a second later, the other vampires withdrew as well, looking at their comrade in horror. It sounded almost like the vampire was on fire, except the only marks on him were made in Kate’s blood.

Just when Kate was starting to fear for the safety of her eardrums, the vampire finally stopped screaming and dropped, motionless, to the ground. The others fled back down into the blackness of the tunnel as though they were pursued by the devil.

“What the hell just happened?” Declan asked. He turned to look at Kate, who was still pointing her gun after the retreating vampires. “Put it down, Freelander. They’re gone.”

“Let me see your face,” the Big Guy said, and took her chin in his hands. She was always surprised at how gentle his touch could be, given that he typically reserved touch for a cuff to the back of the head.

“I’m fine,” Kate said. “It’s just a scratch.”

“It’s bleeding a lot for a scratch,” Declan pointed out. He turned to Mary. “What about you?”

“I’m fine,” Mary said. “Bit of a headache. Apparently I should never stand next to a dying vampire.”

“Words to live by,” Kate agreed. She tried to look over, but the Big Guy held her face still. “It is dead, right?”

“Oh, it’s dead,” Declan said, poking it with his boot. “I’m just not sure how.”

“It’s the blood,” Mary said. “He was thinking about unclean blood when he died, and so were the others when they ran away.”

“My blood is unclean?” Kate said.

“To vampires, it would seem so,” Mary said.

“That seems promising.” Kate looked down at the clip of bullets in her hand, her expression speculative.

“That is not a good idea,” Declan said. “You only have so much blood. And besides, between the heat of actually firing a bullet and the airspeed, there probably wouldn’t be much left by the time it reached the vampire.”

“You saw how that vamp reacted,” Kate protested “It wouldn’t take that much!”

“They are very, very scared of her, Declan,” Mary said. “Whatever we do, it’s going to have to be done soon. They’re planning to wake more of them to take her out.”

Kate winced as the Big Guy finished disinfecting her wound and pressed a piece of gauze against the cut to stem the blood flow. “Hold that,” he said, and Kate raised her hand to comply.

“We’ll go back, and get Magnus and Tesla,” Declan said. “I still don’t like using the C4 before we’ve secured a second exit, but it appears we’re even more pressed for time than we were, and I, for one, will feel much better when Helen Magnus is the one giving orders.”

“Cool,” said Kate, her voice slightly muffled by the gauze. “Let’s go blow something up.”

++

Helen was standing next to the door, pressing randomly against the chyrons and hoping for the best, while Nikola paced around the room, trying to extract current from reluctant panels. He stopped abruptly, his head cocked to the side, as though he were listening to something she couldn’t hear.

And that, of course, was exactly what he was doing. He couldn’t match Afina, but his hearing was better than a human’s. Helen paused to watch him as he strained to hear.

“Helen move away from the door!” he said, alarmed, and grabbed her hand to pull her back.

Moving with vampire speed, he brought her around behind the pillar that was farthest from the door. He pressed her against it, back to stone, and braced his arms on either side of her shoulders. He was, in all likelihood, standing a little bit closer to her than he needed to be. She shivered, not from cold or blood loss, and he moved closer, and then his mouth was on hers.

“Nikola,” she started, trying to speak around his lips, and then stopped. She kissed him back, let his hands wander down to her waist. He caught her wrists, lifting the one Afina had bitten, and kissed it as well. “Nikola,” she said again, and he grinned, that lightning smile that took her breath away. “Dammit,” she said, and took his face between her hands to kiss him again, but before she could give any thought to admonishing him for taking liberties, and encouraging her to respond in kind, there was a rather loud explosion, and Nikola took advantage of the blast to press even closer to her.

“I’d hate for us to have gotten so far only to have you get nicked by shrapnel when the cavalry arrives,” he whispered in her ear. “At least I’ll heal.”

“You may wish you hadn’t,” she said, but when he pulled back and she saw the bits of shrapnel that had hit him in the blast, her touch to remove them was gentle, and not exactly professional.

“Magnus?”

“Oh thank God,” Helen said and pushed Nikola back. He went easily, but she knew from the expression on his face that they would probably be finishing this conversation later. She raised her voice. “Over here, Kate! Both of us.”

Helen walked out from behind the pillar, and smiled when she saw that Kate was accompanied by Declan and her old friend. Then a fourth person entered the tomb, and Helen stopped in surprise.

“Hello, Helen,” said Mary Kelly. “It’s good to see you.”

++

Afina raged.

There was little point in rage, generally speaking, but she had not come so far to be brought down by mere humans, regardless of what poison they had managed to put into their blood. Helen Magnus was proving more trouble than she was worth, eternal blood supply or no. If Afina ruled the world, she would hardly want for blood donors. It would have been nice to have someone as tasty as Helen, but it was not a requirement.

She sent her warriors back up to face the humans, reminding them of their superiority even if one of the humans posed a small danger to them. Then she went back below, to where her court lay sleeping. It was time to wake them and take them above. It was time to end this world, and begin anew.

++

Nikola placed his hands firmly behind his back and looked closely at Kate. He grinned at her and she glared at him.

“You know, that’s really annoying,” she said.

“I’ve been told, yes,” he replied. “So you’ve got it then? The Blight?”

“That’s what it’s called?” Kate said. “That’s not really flattering.”

“But you do have it?” Helen pressed.

“If it results in screaming and then dead vampires, yes I do,” Kate said. “We should have packed ear plugs.”

“That’s what happens when Henry doesn’t pack,” the Big Guy said.

“I will be curtailing his vacation time, believe me,” Helen said. “But in the meantime, I have other questions for you.”

“Such as why I’m here?” Mary said.

“That did cross my mind, yes,” Helen said. “Though I am glad to see you up and about.”

“It’s Source Blood related, Magnus,” Declan said. “We can get into the details later, but she’s basically been our early warning system.”

“You don’t need to touch them?” Helen said.

“Not any more than I need to touch you, when you’re emotional enough,” Mary said.

“What’s going on?” Nikola said. “What are they doing?”

Mary closed her eyes.

“They’re on the move,” she said. “Most of them are on their way back up here, to deal with Kate. But one, the strong one, is moving down.”

“That will be Afina,” Nikola said. “We have to stop her.”

“Do you have the map?” the Big Guy asked.

“It’s down there with her,” Helen said. “If we can activate it, it will detect her presence and explode.”

“Helen, we’ve barely downloaded a fraction of that database!” Nikola protested. “You can’t just blow it up.”

“Oh yes I can,” Helen said. “And if you’re not going to help me, you can stay here and fight with them.”

Electricity crackled around Nikola’s fingers, and everyone took a step back.

“Oh, I have a score to settle with her,” Nikola said, his voice dark and inhuman.

“What the – ” Kate started, surprised, but then changed her mind. “You know, we can talk about it later. You had better get going.”

“Good luck!” Helen said. Then she grabbed Nikola by the sleeve and pulled him down to where the sleeping vampires lay waiting for their Queen.

++

“I have an idea,” Mary whispered to Kate. “Declan is going to hate it.”

The two of them were crouched on one side of the exploded doorway, taking refuge in the rubble they’d created. Declan and the Big Guy had gone into the corridor to draw fire, which had taken them out of earshot if Mary spoke quietly enough.

“What is it?” Kate whispered back.

“I can tell where they are,” Mary said. “They’ve separated from one another in the hope of taking us in waves. If I can get to them, one at a time, I can surprise them with your blood.”

“That will be dangerous,” Kate pointed out.

“And hiding in a tomb waiting for them to attack is safe as houses,” Mary said. “Besides, Nikola handed me this.”

Kate looked down at the object in Mary’s hands. It was clearly some sort of blood bag, and it had clearly been used.

“Just tell me that Tesla didn’t use the needle himself,” Kate said.

“He didn’t,” Mary assured her. “Helen did. He just used his teeth. He made sure I read it in his mind.”

“Well, that’s better than nothing,” Kate said. “I suppose Magnus should be clean enough.”

Before she could think the better of it, she inserted the needle and watched with a kind of morbid fascination as her blood began to fill the bag. It filled before she started to feel lightheaded though, and she removed the needle carefully while Mary tied off the bag. Nikola’s teeth had torn it, so she had to hold it awkwardly, and blood seeped out and began to cover her hands.

“Sorry,” Kate said, pressing her hand against the puncture mark.

“It would have happened eventually anyway,” Mary said. “Wish me luck!”

“To both of us,” Kate said, and then Mary was gone.

++

There was little point in stealth. Speed was the most important thing now, so Helen didn’t complain when Nikola raced past her once he was sure of the direction. By the time she reached the tomb, Nikola and Afina were exchanging blows, both of them all but ricocheting off the walls under the force of the other’s attack.

“Helen, the panel!” Nikola shouted, and she saw that Afina had already begun the sequence that would wake the other vampires.

She ran for it, and began to press the buttons she hoped would stop the sequence Afina had initiated. Afina roared in anger, and shifted the focus of her attack. Instead of trying to disable Nikola, she was trying to go through him, to get to Helen and stop her. Nikola shifted too, but his more defensive actions weren’t as strong, and he started losing ground.

“Any time now, Helen,” he said, his tone deceptively light. Helen didn’t look up from what she was doing, though she knew that Nikola was probably suffering to buy her time.

She pressed the last few buttons in the sequence, and the panel stopped moving, the door to the massive tomb sliding shut as well. Afina roared again, pinning Nikola to the ground, and raised her clawed hand for the blow that would surely have killed him if she let it fall.

“Wait!” Helen said. “Stop! Don’t kill him. I have a proposal.”

“Now you want to negotiate?” Afina said, though she did pull back from Nikola’s chest. “Make it fast.”

Helen crossed to where Afina had thrown the packs those endless hours ago, and quickly retrieved the map from within it.

“The Praxians,” she said, her breath coming fast. “Your enemies. They left you the surface while they retreated into the depths of Hollow Earth.”

She had Afina’s attention now, and Nikola had enough space to raise his head.

“Helen,” he said, and she could tell he still didn’t like this plan. “No.”

“They’re still there,” Helen said, the crystal in her hand. She doubted that her father had ever considered this end for her birthday gifts, but if she’d learned nothing else this year, it’s that Gregory Magnus was terrible at predicting the future. “In a thriving city. More advanced than anything you had in your kingdom.”

Afina abandoned Nikola altogether, moving towards Helen with an eager expression on her face.

“Don’t do this,” Nikola said, and Helen couldn’t tell if he was acting or if he genuinely would rather the world ended than Helen blow up the map.

“Quiet,” Afina snapped, stepping over him. “Tell me more,” she demanded of Helen.

Helen put the pieces together on top of the paper, and the map hummed to life, projecting the familiar buildings of Praxis on to the floor.

“Unbelievable,” Afina said, her voice awed.

Nikola was on his feet now, which was good, because if this went according to plan, he and Helen were going to have to run very fast very soon.

“Leave the surface alone,” said Helen. “You can have Hollow Earth. Take revenge on your old enemies. That’s my offer.”

“Dammit, no,” Nikola said, and Helen decided that he wasn’t acting. He was just being annoying in a productive way.

“How do I find it?” Afina asked.

“Second level activates on a Praxian voice command,” Helen said. “You tell us how to leave, and I’ll tell you how to talk to the map.”

Helen tossed Afina a walkie-talkie, and the Vampire Queen smiled.

“Humans,” she said. She walkd towards Helen and walked all the way around her, as though deciding if she were telling the truth. When Helen met her gaze with a smile and without flinching, Afina nodded. “I’ll honour your deal. But it won’t last. Once we’ve conquered the world down there, we’ll be back.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Helen said. “We’ll be waiting.”

“I would have so liked to have had you for my court,” Afina said. “You’d better go. I’m not eternally patient.”

Helen grabbed Nikola and pulled him back up the corridor. She could tell he wanted to yell at her, insist that there had to be another way, but he was mindful of Afina’s hearing and didn’t dare to speak the words. Helen had bought them some time. Now she just had to hope it was enough.

++

Mary Kelly was covered in blood that wasn’t hers, and the vampires fled from her as though she were Death herself. Mary had seen Death before, had met him in a dark alley a long time ago, and escaped him twice thanks to luck and her own wits. Others had not been so lucky, but Mary had survived.

One by one, she stalked the vampires and brought them down. She could hear gunfire behind her, which meant that a few of them had gotten through her guard, but she knew that Declan, Kate and the Big Guy could handle them. She focused on the thoughts of those she sought and tried not to be too concerned about the growing sense of utter glee she felt emanating from beneath her.

By the time the screaming stopped, the bag was empty and Mary’s mind was full.

++

Helen and Nikola raced up the tunnel towards the tomb. There was gunfire ahead of them, sporadic and choppy, and soon there was silence. Helen tried not to imagine the scene that lay ahead of them, hoping for the best. When they burst into the tomb, Helen took a moment to be glad. There were Kate and Declan and her old friend, and all of them were whole, though Kate was a bit pale. Helen knew that she had used her blood to stem the tide, and was proud of her.

“Where is Mary?” Nikola asked, and Helen cursed herself for not noticing.

“She took matters into her own hands,” Declan said. Helen guessed from his tone that he wasn’t exactly pleased.

“It was a solid idea, boss,” Kate said. “And it probably just saved our asses.”

“We need to go,” said Nikola. “Now.”

“We can’t just leave her!” Kate protested.

“Think,” said the Big Guy, looking at Helen and Nikola. “Think as hard as you can. Tell her she has to get out.”

Helen bent her thoughts to the task, and could tell by the way Nikola straightened beside her that he was doing the same thing. The seconds seemed endless and quiet, and then there was a noise in the corridor.

Mary Kelly was covered in blood, but she was whole and sound.

“So we need to run?” she said. Helen smiled.

“That would be a very good idea,” Nikola said.

++

Afina waited with the map. She examined the buildings carefully, trying to determine function from form and admiring the architecture she would soon call home. The minutes ticked by, and she began to wonder if Helen and Nikola had been killed by her warriors. If that was the case, Afina would simply take the world above first and crack the map once she was finished.

Before she could plan her domination too far, though, the walkie-talkie in her hand crackled to life.

“Hello Afina,” said Helen.

“Password,” said Afina. “Do not make the mistake of thinking that you are beyond my reach.”

“Kaharaag,” said Helen, her voice clear in spite of the static, and the map changed at her word.

++

They made it to the surface just in time to see the explosion rip through what was left of the Praxian outpost.

“That was close,” Nikola said. His voice was euphoric, and Helen could only guess at what was going on inside his head, though she was pretty sure it had less to do with saving the world and more to do with being a vampire again.

“I think we had at least three more seconds,” Declan said.

The Big Guy grunted. The sat phone rang, and Kate pulled it out of her pocket.

“Will!” she said “Good news, I hope!”

Helen couldn’t hear what Will said in return, but she couldn’t help but smile as Kate’s expression turned quizzical.

“You’re where?”

* * *

 _Epilogue_

“No, no, no!” Abby protested, reclining next to Will on the sofa in Helen’s office. “The best part was definitely when we got rescued by a giant squid that was already friends with Will!”

“Dude,” said Kate. “What is it with you and the Indian Ocean?”

“I’m trying not to think about it,” Will said, but he was smiling.

“I had no idea that the vampire squid would be enemies with _Sanguine vampiris_ ,” Helen said. She was sorting through the mail that had accumulated on her desk in her absence and didn’t look up when she spoke. “I think it’s fascinating.”

“Next time you decide to crash with one, maybe you should take Tesla instead of Will,” Kate said.

It had taken them a few days to get home, since they needed to be airlifted out of Tanzania and then Nikola managed to disappear once they arrived in London, while Helen and Declan reported their adventure to the other Heads of Sanctuary. In spite of the time, there hadn’t been a lot of time for questions or answers, so they were filling each other in as best they could. Declan had remained in London, of course, but Mary had come along to fill Helen in on what she and Declan had done, and to catch up on other matters before deciding what to do next.

“I suppose making Tesla a vampire again was inevitable?” Will said.

“It was either that or let him die,” Helen said. She looked at Mary, and knew the other woman would read the apology that lay under her words. “I wasn’t ready for him to die.”

“It would be kind of boring without him around,” Kate admitted. “I mean, who knows what sort of scheme we’ll have to save him from next?”

The Big Guy arrived with a tray of sandwiches, and Sophie trailing behind him.

“All well?” Will asked.

Sophie nodded and took a seat. “Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “Sally and I managed well enough while you were gone.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Helen said. “Thank you.”

“Hey, I figure this makes us almost even,” Sophie said. “And it was fun. Sally is a blast.”

There was another sound from the corridor, and then Henry walked in, his weekend bag slung over his shoulder and his tablet already in his hands.

“You guys will not believe the time I’ve had,” he said. “I might be a werewolf, but I was not meant to spend that much time away from technology. I nearly went crazy which, if you can imagine, does not help a guy trying to find his inner wolf.”

“Henry,” Helen said sharply, and he looked up.

“So,” he said slowly, taking everything in. “What did I miss?”

+++

 **finis**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Acknowledgements** : I didn’t know this when I started, but it takes a VILLAGE to write a Big Bang. So thank you to lanna_kitty and mylittleredgirl, my KKBB groupies; to shadadukal and oparu, for the beta and for never saying “God, Kate! Stop adding characters!”; to rj_anderson and holdouttrout for making me do this for real; to world_of_blade and Cole, for the cheerleading; to everyone else who was nice to me; and of course to irony_rocks, for running this thing in the first place.
> 
>  **Notes** : I played pretty free with mixing canon, fanon and my own fic writing this. Most of it comes from other people, but the Mary Kelly parts are mine, and come particularly from “The Monster and Mary Kelly”, but also from the other parts of the _Blood Will Out_ series.
> 
> Gravity_Not_Included, August 17, 2011


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